On Thursday, the company behind the nearly ubiquitous in-flight catalog SkyMall filed for bankruptcy. As the Wall Street Journal put it, the institution was simply a “victim of evolving rules and technology that now lets airline passengers keep their smartphones and tablets powered up during flight.”
For those who spent the majority of their early ’90s flights thumbing through the quarterly magazine, this is a tragedy. Like the mall staple Sharper Image, the catalog pushed the boundaries of absurdity in almost every category of domestic existence. Rather than attempt to fill the space of a practical retailer, the SkyMall catalog enticed you with overpriced items you never dreamed existed, items like hair-growing laser headsets or kitty litterboxes that resemble the Death Star.
They were all wildly expensive and impractical but all a tantalizing possibility when you were stuck on a delayed six-hour flight.
Below, we offer some of the more ingenious products the forlorn catalog brought us (some sourced from this wonderful Tumblr). Rest in peace, SkyMall, on your glorious and weird neck pillow in the sky.
1. Night Glow Toilet Seat: $50
So you don’t miss.
(Via SkyMall)
2. Litter Robots: $340 and up
Uses a patented sifting process that pushes your cat’s waste into a separate drawer, then fills the pan back up with clean litter.
(Via SkyMall)
3. Seabreacher Customized Boat: $85,000
It’s a boat that looks like a shark.
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