It's a little hard to read because of the small print, but the Simpsons ad offers three special "extras" for the Silvertone brand TVs they were selling.

One is a very early remote control, an innovation for its time.

There's a TV timer in the form of a clock that turns your set on and off. 

And then there's my favourite, an add-on that lets you hear AM radio (all there really was back then) through your TV speaker. My question - wouldn't having the set turned on to get those speakers to work have interfered with the AM signal? If so, what's the point?

The record player at the top left of that ad is advertised as a wind up gramophone! I can't believe they still had those back in the late 50s. But there's the proof that they did. 

turkeytop wrote:

In those days, the front half of the catalogue was all toys. I used to spend hours poring over it.

Have fun reliving your childhood! Simply click on each page to go to the next one.

Eaton's 1958 Christmas Catalogue

Those television set prices have come down a great deal. In 1949 Eaton's was selling a GE 10" b&w set [with 12" speaker} for $791. When you read the fine print there was an additional fee of $100-$150 depending on location for installation of your outdoor antenna to receive dependable reception of WBEN ch 4 Buffalo. Imagine paying slightly less than $1000 to watch one channel.

I recall seeing one a long, long time ago when I was just a kid and still living at home. But for the life of me, I couldn't tell what it was or what happened to it. Wish I still had it for the collectibility of it, if nothing else. 

As a kid I would always compare to see which Eaton's or Simpson-Sears Christmas catalogue had the most pages, and who had the bigger toy sections.  They were always very close in the page count as I recall.
Eaton's always had a bit of an edge because they had the big Santa Claus big parade downtown.