David Budge, December 28, 2008

Skymall, the airborne respite for the overly monied shopper, has been plying its costly wares since the early 1990s. But is this oft-dismissed catalog simply an expensive diversion, or can it be an uncanny barometer of the moods and fears of the American public?

When Skymall made its debut in 1990, it sold merchandise repackaged from other catalogues and made them available to airline passengers. As America began to move out of the uncertain and trying period of the Cold War with the fall of the Soviet Union in December of 1991, Skymall was simultaneously embracing the more carefree decade of the 90s by filling its pages with glossy depictions of a higher standard of living. In particular, Hammacher Schlemmer and The Sharper Image, both known for their somewhat over-the-top sense of cool uselessness that their products exude, became the major feature of Skymall. Soon, Skymall’s pages were filled with such items as the electric towel warmer, the coffee table fish tank, the remote-control Mylar Zeppelin, and other outrageous novelties.

But just as Skymall followed America’s spending habits up, it also followed them down. Nowadays, flying goes hand in hand with post-9/11 paranoia as well as concerns over the cost of gasoline, America’s recent economic woes, and concerns over the fitness of the environment. As such, Skymall has turned to less outlandish, if no more less expensive fare: security cameras for your house, biometric locks for your doors, combination glass breakers/seatbelt cutters to extricate yourself from your flaming deathtrap of a car, and escape ladders to escape your similarly immolated house.

When it’s not selling its erstwhile readers prophylactics for the oncoming Apocalypse, Skymall purports to allow its readers to regress into their houses, with cozy-looking decorations that seem to offer a feeling of security and warmth from the "cold terrifying vistas of reality." Some decorations seem to project a retro-1950s feel for when America was the dominant world power and the only thing the public had to worry about was their decimation and incineration by the slavering communist hordes. Other ads try to evoke a tropical feeling using location instead of time to set their owners at ease.

As Skymall has followed America’s downward spiral, hopefully it will follow America back upward toward prosperity and peace. Hopefully, the electric towel warmer, the remote control Mylar Zeppelin, and the coffee table fish tank will live to see the glossy and specie-soaked pages of this venerable publication once more.