Who else used to whack off to the lingerie section in the Sears catalog? Pickings were slim in the pre internet 1980s! All I had was the Sears catalog and the cigarette ads in Newsweek and Life magazine that had people playing in a river with their clothes on.

Wear i was uk, It was the Kays catalog, but you could easily pick up old newspapers on buses etc and often they would have the topless page 3 girl in them, if you were super lucky you would find the occasional daily sport paper which was almost soft porn
these were also cheap to buy but i was more interested in smoking and cheap cider in my teens than actually buy a paper

The guys in the Sears catalog were less exciting... too Hardy Boys book art, and not enough Parker Stevenson and ( *swoon* ) Shaun Cassidy tv Hardy Boys for my taste!

National Geographic, fashion, and music magazines did supply me with much more WAM images to fantasize with, but Time/Newsweek/sometimes-Life did their part to.

Although probably not in the exact same way it worked for you guys.

Awkward, but I came from a long line of Sears workers and teenage me might've swooned over the feather-haired guys in the early 90s catalogs after I'd picked out my metal detector dream present from said catalog.

For what it's worth, I've set a lot of my WAM fiction in the early Eighties.

There are times I have to remind myself it's not still the 80s.

Sears catalogues, flyers, and The Shopping Channel were used in 90's to fill the void of my sweater fetish until I got the internet.

For me, it was the "red carpet looks" section of my mom's People magazines. That, or picturing something in my mind.

So from the age I started to notice girls, I would help myself to my mum's mail order catalogs - in the UK these were 'Great Universal' mainly but there were occasionally other ones delivered twice yearly. These were fat 500 full colour catalogs and the first 25% of the book was devoted to women's fashion. I would hungry look through these for the clothing that excited me. NOT lingerie really, it didn't really do it for me - I was really into seeing women in overalls (dungarees in the uk), jumpsuits (not very common in the 1990s) and bodysuits. But if you really got lucky, in the sleepwear pages you might find a woman wearing a cosy all-in-one pyjamas jumpsuit. I would fantasise about being babysat by her

A few years back I found a site which sells these scanned in catalogs, with hundreds to choose from including USA ones... and I bought loads - I have at least 30 and most of them have clothing that still thrills me when I see it being worn in this context.

The back half of the catalogue had furniture, appliances, toys, etc... so it was always justifiable as to why the catalog was in my room. I did also love ogling over any products really - those 30 or so files ive got really are all the nostalgia I need.