12. Sears was not the only mail-order company to offer somewhat strange products to its customers
It can be argued that the Sears catalog was the most famous in America during its heyday, though in fact Montgomery Ward’s mail order catalog preceded it and for a long time outsold Sears. Other catalogs emerged from the success of the two, and by the 1940s nearly all major department stores issued annual and seasonal catalogs. As the automotive business grew, and more and more Americans learned that they liked to work on and modify their own cars, mail order businesses emerged to accommodate them. One of them was J. C. Whitney, which began supporting car owners in 1915. Over the years it has advertised its own share of bizarre products, including an in-car coffee percolator in the 1960s.
Resembling an old-fashioned stove top percolator, which is emulated, the coffee maker could brew up to four cups of coffee and come complete with four cups and containers to hold cream and sugar, though how the driver was to avail himself of this modern miracle was not explained. Obviously, the coffee needed to be set up before one was on one’s way, but the difficulty of pouring out a cup of joe, adding cream and sugar to taste, and then sipping away from the lidless cup is likely the reason the automotive percolator never percolated to the top of the sales charts. Marketed in the catalog in the early 1960s, the percolator sold for about seventeen bucks, almost $150 in 2018 dollars.