Archie McPhee News Blog of Fun

In 1997, we released our most controversial catalog ever. It marked our move from black and white on newsprint to beautiful color on glossy paper. Believe it or not, we lost customers over this! Or so they said, we got lots of letters from people who said they were giving up on us because we dared to show the products...

By 1994 Seattle had become a hip place. While most of this is because of the number of amazing bands on the Seattle scene and some amazing comic artists, we like to think that we helped a bit. This catalog cover featured our store staff and one of them (Pete on the far left) still works there. The layout in...

Here's another scanned catalog - Catalog 18 from 1990. This catalog featured the muddy black and white pictures and awesome writing our customers had come to expect. Also included was a statement of purpose that is as true now as it was then. Except for the part about robots, we now welcome our robot overlords. OUR PURPOSE IN LIFEWe are...

We thought you might like to see the first Archie McPhee novelty catalog from 1984! In his book, Who Would Buy This?, our owner, Mark Pahlow, describes its creation: I did the primitive layout for those first few (catalogs) myself.   I'd take bad black and white photos using my Pentax 35mm Spotmatic. Then the photos, developed by the first Costco in the nation,...