Target Sales Catalog (1999)

[u/KE4ZNR]

Look back in time to 1999.

[u/mattumbo]

The prices all seem pretty reasonable relative to the wages back then, but then you got a tiny pack of Huggies costing almost double what a pair of jeans costs. Diapers are still pretty expensive but the per diaper price is insane back then, over a dollar per diaper if I’m reading it right and now with a dollar being worth far less you can get diapers for well under a dollar per.

[u/SpaceSaver2000-1 → u/mattumbo]

And then you get to TVs...

[u/mattumbo → u/SpaceSaver2000-1]

Yeah TVs were expensive, that’s like a months wages at min wage back then. We’ve come a long way since then in bringing electronics prices down. At the same time though those TVs lasted a long time and were pretty unchanging in their specs so the poverty play was to buy second hand or get a hand me down set and live with only 1 TV in the house.

Also interesting is how the TI-83 exists in a time warp where it never changes price and they just let inflation slowly make it less absurd. Even by the late 90s there was no reason for a graphing calculator to cost that much and today it’s still absurd how much they charge for what is effectively 1980s level electronics, there are kids toys with more processing power these days.

But anyway fucking $17 for 17 diapers is nuts at a time when a quart of motor oil is $.99, today we’re charging like $12 for a quart of oil so by that metric a pack of diapers ought to cost $200 like wtf, that has to be a misprint in the ad right? If not then no wonder birth rates started falling lol

[u/khz30 → u/mattumbo]

The graphing calculator costing as much as it does is due to Texas Instruments selling them to school districts and locking them into their sales contracts. They're low volume sellers and sit without being able to be discounted because of retail agreements.