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SkyMall, the glossy in-flight catalog you can't miss or resist, has filed for bankruptcy. The company cites in-flight Wi-Fi and intense online shopping competition for falling sales.
NPR's Elise Hu looks back.
ELISE HU, BYLINE: If no one buys SkyMall when it goes up for auction, we have to be prepared for a world without the tray table nap pillow or those giant yard yetis, as James Bingham remembers.
JAMES BINGHAM: You always dreamed, like, someday maybe you'd make it big enough to be able to afford those.
HU: Anne Lewis of Pierre, South Dakota recalls SkyMall as a link to home.
ANNE LEWIS: In the early '90s, we lived overseas. And my mother bought us a huge AM/FM shortwave radio from SkyMall so we could listen to Voice of America.
HU: Matthew Bagot of Baton Rouge says it's a link to his mom.
MATTHEW BAGOT: Every flight she took, every business trip she took, she'd bring back a copy for me. And I could always expect that when I got home.
HU: Danielle St. Louis of Madison, Wisconsin uses SkyMall like so many of the rest of us.
DANIELLE ST. LOUIS: It's kind of, like, the thing I look forward to when I get on the plane - is I'm going to get to sort of faux shop through SkyMall.
HU: And Ehren Werner of Santa Rosa reads it to the end.
EHREN WERNER: The very last page of the SkyMall I picked up had a personal submarine/watercraft called the Sea Breacher for the low, low price of only $85,000.
HU: Maybe that's why its parent company is filing for bankruptcy - too few submarine sales. Elise Hu, NPR News.