It was a great help to parents. Look at what their spawn was looking at in the catalog, and buy it.
I was at that awkward age one Christmas: too old for “toys”. I had stopped running my model railroad, stopped building plastic model kits. Didn’t care about clothes. Was not interested in much of anything outside of slogging through school work. Mom gave up and blurted out “what do you want for Christmas? I can’t think of anything”. I said “a metal file box, like you have”. She was stunned. She hustled down to Dykema Office Supply, and grabbed one. Didn’t even bother taking the price tag off. I still have that file box. Right now, it is full of back year tax records. Most durable, most useful, thing I ever got for Christmas.
Steve