When I was a kid I *loved* those green envelopes that would come in the mail with all the coupons for weird products. I even convinced my mom once to let me order a $7 porcelain doll in a beautiful velvet dress (I still have it… or at least, it’s still at my parents’ house). My favourite, though, were the Primera labels. I would pore over those ads for EVER. I’d choose which little picture I’d want on it (usually the dog or the horse), then the font (script! It was the fanciest in 1987!), and whether I would want to spend the extra 50 cents on having my name in gold foil, instead of black (hint: YES!).
I could never convince my parents to let me get my own address labels, though. The only people I corresponded with at that time were the editor of Highlights for Children, and my grandma, and those labels came in spools of 500. Considering the fact that at that point in time we were moving every 2 or 3 years (military parents), that was probably a good call on my parents’ part.
I loved doing the same thing when I was a kid – okay, not the porcelain doll part because, ya’ know… 5 brothers so, yeah, that wouldn’t have lasted 3 seconds in our house but scouring through the coupons and ads and the mailing labels? I was all over that.