In creating our Electric Football Wishbook we did a lot more than just gather up a bunch of Christmas catalog pages. A lot of effort went into restoring these pages to make them look as good as possible.

Those catalogs, which we cherish as genuine historical documents, were not printed on the best quality of paper. In fact, they were printed on lightweight and low quality paper stock. The main reason Sears and Ward did this was so that they didn’t end up with a Christmas catalog the size of a Webster’s Dictionary.

Another reason was cost. Thin paper was cheap, and the companies viewed these catalogs as throwaway items. There was no point in investing a lot of money into something that would end up in the trash by Valentine’s Day.

So any Christmas catalog that survives into the 21st Century is guaranteed to have “issues.” The most obvious being seriously yellowing and discolored pages.

Restoring And Doing The Wishbook “Right” 

Once we got underway designing the Wishbook, one thing became obvious. To do the concept “right,” we needed to take the time and restore each individual page. Our goal was to make each page look like it did when it was first published. We didn’t always meet this goal. But the pages are much improved over what they look in their current natural states.

In addition to this extensive restoration process, we went back into our catalog collections and re-scanned the pages. In doing this we strived to get to get the most complete scan we could . A time consuming and tricky feat to accomplish without damaging the spines of our catalogs. (Please be reassured that no catalogs were harmed in the making of our book!)

At the end of the day, we’re totally proud of the Electric Football Wishbook. Technology is amazing. It allowed us to do justice to the incredible Electric Football legacy that these catalog pages provide. We hope you enjoy looking at all the beautiful and amazing games that make up the colorful history of Electric Football. It’s a great way to celebrate 50 years of Tudor Games NFL games and teams.

There are Christmas Dreams on every page!

Earl, Roddy, & MK