The 1994 JCPenney Christmas Catalog’s Best Pages: Part 1
A vital examination to kickstart the Season of Melancholy
It’s 1994, and you’re blossoming nerd. There is no Marvel Cinematic Universe. The monoculture hasn’t yet wholly absorbed and regurgitated a glut of superhero, sci-fi, and fantasy properties. Your loved ones have no idea what you’re talking about when you use phrases like “Mandalorian armor” and “adamantium skeleton.” Thankfully, around Christimastime, you receive a massive tome that—when paired with a marker—offers a Rosetta Stone to getting a clear message across and obtaining exactly what you desire to keep your passions burning:
Within these 634 pages were thousands of products intended please every member of your family. In this edition of Power Action! we’re going to look at a handful of its most appealing pages, with some fun facts along the way. We begin with a section dedicated to remote control cars—one of the great ways to get indoor kids outside in the 1990s:
There’s much to admire here, but first: Look at that Turbo Python, which is touted as “the wildest remote-controlled sport truck ever.” And who could argue? It’s a damned snake with wheels. The Tyco product was a chimera of a 7-year-old’s interests at the time: a R/C car with a snake attachment that super-soaked passers-by with water.
It’s wild to think there was a precious half-page dedicated to The Shadow, the pulp hero who got his own Baldwin-led film that year. Random Smokin’ Semi Rig aside, the pairing of The Shadow and Batman was pretty smart, considering the darker, Art Deco-flavored nature of both properties at the time.
The film was flop that year, having debuted during the fever pitch of The Lion King's cinema reign. The toys were still cool, though.
The video game pages of this thing deserve their own post, but what’s preserved on this page is a forgotten component Sega’s master growth plan that never blossomed in the right way. Everyone remembers the launch of the Sega Channel, and its early adoption of using the Internet to download games to devices. (Which were then automatically deleted off of the internal memory with the console was turned off.)
But the Activator doesn’t get enough credit for what it was trying to popularize. It wasn't exactly as advertised, either, though: You'd think you'd be able to to 1-to-1 movements inside its octagonal ring and they'd be reflected on-screen. Really, you had specific movements that lined up with movements in the corresponding game, and if you did it exactly right, you'd activate one of the three Genesis button actions.
Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II were two notable games that implemented the Activator, but its lack of reliability and price (almost as much as the system!) made it bomb. Still, there’s much to admire in how Sega was always trying to push the home console forward.
That’s all for this edition of our look at the ‘94 catalog, but look for Part 2 soon! And let us know if there’s another year and store you’d like us to examine in future editions.