The trip to sharper image was not complete until you got to sit in the massage chair.

The spirit of it still exists in temu ads. Turn off your ad blocker for a minute and you'll be inundated with cheap plastic things that you think are great ideas and you'll use once and forget about.

Yeah dude that stuff always blew my mind as a kid. Browsing the real sharper image store then was a treat too. I got a skymall hot dog toaster one Christmas and it was amazing.

I'm convinced that all the stupid shit in Skymall is still available on the Internet, but I miss having it all collected in one place. The curated ridiculousness was perfect.

I used to love going into The Sharper Image and Brookstone stores at the mall when I was a kid.

Here you go:

https://www.hammacher.com/home

I got on a plane a few weeks ago and realized that I didn’t have headphones. I would have really liked something to read. AA does offer 20 free minutes of WiFi so I opened a bunch of tabs in my browser, but a skymall would ah e been read for sure.

Always wanted those shoes with the spring in your step

Wait, Skymall isn't a thing anymore? Here I thought I was just picking shitty airlines...

https://www.flyingsmarter.com/what-happened-to-skymall

"SkyMall declared bankruptcy in January of 2015, but they were purchased in April 2015 and relaunched the following month as an online retailer. There was a plan to get back into planes but that never really happened. Today, SkyMall is still an online retailer."

Huh, all online now...

https://skymall.com/

A quick Google search shows both companies are still in business, so not much to miss? I imagine they are put SkyMall on some airlines

I miss the Edge Company. It was like someone took The Sharper Image and slapped a medium-thick coat of 90's rad on it with a mild focus on EDC-style pocket junk.

Nope, not one bit.

How about the DAK catalogs?

Not really. The world has changed so much that I don't think there's space for them anymore. But they were pretty great when I was a dumb kid.

I loved that stuff but never got to buy anything really. Probably for the best it was all junk in the end. Stuff that looked cool but you didn't need any of it really.

For like a minute then I watch a movie on my phone

I like seeing Sharper Image stuff in thrift stores. Take their stuff out of the curated experience of their old mall stores, and it's obvious that it's plastic garbage.

I miss when the products themselves weren't cheap garbage. Back in the early 00s they hit a stride of products that were cooler versions of products available everywhere else, same function, better form.

Only if my battery runs out on the plane.

Do any Canadians remember The Little It Store?

Sometimes I miss DAK - I had their bread maker and gave it to my Dad when I moved overseas, and it made excellent - if round - loafs.