Wordburglar laments one of the unforeseen consequences of the bankruptcy of Sears: the loss of their annual Christmas Wishbook catalogue. From 1933 – 2011, the Wishbook was hailed as the “consumerist’s bible” and contained more treasures than the Cave of Wonders, albeit only in picture form. With Wordburglar’s new song, “My Christmas Catalogue Number (prod. by Fresh Kils, cuts by More Or Les)” we get to revisit everything that made the Sears Wishbook great.
Wordburglar, as usual, is deftly manipulating our heart strings with the unfair use of nostalgia. Despite having spent our childhoods similarly pouring of the Wishbook each year, Wordburglar busts out all kinds of toy references we’d completely forgotten about.
Wordburglar gets it so spot on that we just had to assume he had a stash of Wishbooks on hand to work from.
“Honestly no, I just have stupid memory for fun things,” laughs WB.
“I did ask a few people what their favourite things from the catalogue was though!”
“As a kid, I always loved studying all the new toys in the Christmas catalogue. It was just cool to see all that awesome stuff in one place – a collection of fun. The track is really about the feeling you got just from looking at all the toys – not needing to own them. Like I say in the song, ‘after all the elation, I didn’t need toys – I had imagination’. But of course, if I got a cool space Lego set or something I wouldn’t say no.”
As WB says, the Wishbook was “the best read of the season.”
Wordburglar is currently taking the Winter off to work on new music, but plans on returning to touring in the Spring. His most recent album, a science-diction epic of space-rhymes inspired by Star Wars, Transformers, Star Trek, Dr. Who and more, titled SpaceVerse, was released by in August, 2019.