Wonders of the SkyMall

Ladies and gentlemen - please return your seats to their upright position, raise your trays and stow all portable devices as we begin our descent.

Those last 15 minutes or more of a flight can be long ones if you don’t have a good book. Then again, there is always SkyMall – the catalog of catalogs.

I have never actually purchased an item from SkyMall but I have spent countless hours on airplanes turning the worn pages as we began our descent.

I know that most of you have done the same thing. Maybe you finished a book or forgot a magazine or just couldn’t sleep. Whatever the reason, you found yourself lusting for electronic objects you didn’t even know existed 30 minutes earlier.

Just open SkyMall and suddenly you feel the need to buy a self feeder for your cat and stairs for your aging dog.

SkyMall, Inc. was founded in 1990 and originally offered goods from other companies' catalogs for same-day delivery to customers arriving at select U.S. airports. To accomplish the same-day delivery promise, SkyMall operated its own warehouses located on the grounds of selected airports. The company later began offering catalog merchandise to travelers flying most of the nation's air carriers and dropped the same day services in favor of a more traditional catalog approach.

The airline pocket catalog has a circulation of 20 million and is seen by approximately 88% of all domestic air passengers, according to the SkyMall website. That figures to about 650 million travelers annually which means you can sell a lot of CD towers and garden gnomes to that crowd.

Thumbing through a recent issue of SkyMall on my way to Jersey, I was once again tempted to purchase electronic objects like the hovering blimp and voice-activated R2D2 robot. I was also intrigued by the promise of medical devices that would cure my sore back, balding scalp and tired feet.

If there is one theme in this catalog; it would be objects that your spouse will find totally useless.
For example, you can now purchase a dog house shaped like the helmet of your favorite football team (Helmutt House), a remote controlled Tarantula or a pair of seats from Texas Stadium ($649). Maybe you could get your spouse to go for the $3,700 full size arcade game that houses 125 classic Atari and Capcom games!

I found the scariest items in the catalog section called Gadget Universe. For only $199 you can become your own acupuncturist. “Diagnose and heal yourself,” says the ad. Now that’s a scary thought.

The Head Spa Massager ad claims that “the patented Italian design incorporates Japanese engineering…like thousands of tiny fingers simultaneously massaging your scalp.” It doesn’t say whether the tiny fingers are those of Italians or Japanese.

Kids will absolutely go nuts for the marshmallow bazooka that “launches edible missiles up to 40 feet” and the Children’s Electric 1948 Indian Motorcycle that can probably launch a child up to 40 feet.

I think pet owners and people with big CD collections are SkyMall’s easiest targets. There are no less than 4 pages of massive CD storage devices (an IPOD would be cheaper). Attracting pet lovers are the Canine Geneolgy Kit that analyzes your dog’s DNA, the Indoor Dog Restroom with antimicrobial artificial turf and the new Pet Doorbell set.

It’s probably not fair to poke too much fun at SkyMall. It distracts millions of travelers who are afraid of flying. It also lets us dream of gadgets that would be fun to own even if they are impractical.
Did I mention that the Telekinetic Obstacle Course is on sale for $99.95?