THIS Wasn’t in the Catalogue…

This hobby is kind of like train spotting for me: Things come by and we get to match them with items in the catalogue, which is often a treat because we haven’t seen them in real life, only in illustrations. Occasionally something comes along that bears some version of the Stars and Bananas Tag (the only tag that was used during the catalogue era) but cannot be found in the catalogue. These are items that were sold only in stores and for which we have no name or other information. Some may have come in the period immediately after the end of the catalogues in 1988 and whenever in 1989 the new branding appeared.

To review from the Logos and Tags guide: The Stars and Bananas Tag is this:

Anything bearing this Safari and Travel Tag was made AFTER the catalogues ended. There is a ton of this stuff and some of it is quite cool, some very weird, and most quite mediocre, but I don’t collect it or care about it. Sorry.

Now that we have that out of the way, here are a few of the most vexxing WTF-THAT-WASN’T-IN-THE-CATALOGUE!! items. The names are all my invention.

The Shooting Jacket: This damned thing shows up all the time, in numbers that make it seem impossible that it wasn’t sold in the catalog. It certainly looks like something BR would sell. I tend to believe that this came about toward the end of the run and could have spilled over into the period between the end of the Safari catalog and the beginning of the rebrand. They did a lot of weird American Sportman type stuff, trying to be LL Bean or Ralph Lauren.

Photos eBay October 2020

The On-The-Wrong-Track Jacket: This highly questionable athletic wear comes in red and green colors that seem very wrong for BR to me, and compared to the classic Athletic Clothing they DID make, these seem like a corner of the 1980s best left unexplored.

The Hooded Field Jacket comes up a lot and is not in the catalogs. I’ve seen it in several colors and it does have it’s own blog entry. eBay October 2020

The Quilted Corduroy Excessively Lined Jacket: This jacket is baffling to me. Quilted teal corduroy with a multicolored linear lining. I can’t imagine when it is was made. It’s very 80s, but not very BR. Nonetheless, the tag puts in between 1984 and 1988.

The Mysterious Bandanas: These came in red and green and possibly other colors, and have an arched configuration of the logo that I haven’t seen before.

Blowing In The Windbreaker….