Remember when bass pro/cabellas used to be good companies?

I was telling a young co-worker about the halcyon days when the Bass Pro Shop Catalog would arrive in the mail, around the first of the year, and you filled out your order form, gave your money to mama or daddy and they wrote a check made out to Bass Pro Shops, you would put it in an envelope, run out to the mailbox and send it to them and for 6-8 weeks you would rush home from school expecting a package. It would eventually show up, usually before good fishing weather in North Georgia, and opening that box up and putting the new stuff in your tackle box was the official signal that spring had sprung. It might be 15 degrees outside but there was not enough time to get the Zebco 33's cleaned, oiled and new line on them, organizing the tacklebox, reorganizing it....all the while envisioning stringers full of fat crappie and bream and largemouth bass over 10 pounds. Even when Santa Clause was still visiting me every year he did not have a thing on that BPS shipment for anticipation and excitement....chiefly because the list I made for him seldom worked at all while that order form from Bass Pro Shops was what I wanted and it was what was delivered!

There were others....Gander Mountain, Netcraft, Cabelas of course, and Herter's....but BPS was the one. The fact that it would technically be possible to order a damn boat EXCATLY like the one Bill Dance used at times on his show and it would somehow be delivered right to the mailbox (I was a kid, I thought the postman would bring the boat) if one had the money made BPS the penultimate dream book for a 10 year old consumed with fishing.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think cabelas was the first to sell goretex clothing. I have an original cables goretex parka from 1985.
Their waders were unbeatable back in the 80-90’s.

Cabelas branded stuff was always quality. When BPS announced acquisition of Cabelas, I went that day and bought a 4 n 1 duck parka. Still running strong to this day. Both catalogs were awesome...yeah, all my Christmas money was spent on both.