Of all the quirky-gift catalogs that defined the late twentieth-century mailbox, What on Earth was one of the most consistent oddities. The cover would announce itself with a wink and a tagline — funny shirts, weird-but-useful gadgets, the occasional inflatable thing — and the inside pages would deliver on the promise. Every few months a reader asks us where it went, usually right after a holiday season when they noticed the catalog never arrived.
The short version: the print What on Earth catalog appears to have wound down around 2020, and as of June 2026 it has not returned. The longer version, and where to find similar gifts now, is below.
A quick history
What on Earth was part of the broader American novelty-catalog tradition — the family of mailers that delivered the kind of gift that makes the recipient laugh first and use the thing second. Funny t-shirts dominated the cover and the early pages. Slogan mugs, kitchen gadgets that solved problems you did not know you had, themed jewelry, gag gifts for the office white-elephant exchange, the holiday merchandise that gets more cheerful every November — all of it lived in the What on Earth book.
The catalog circulated for several decades and built a loyal repeat audience: people who shopped it specifically for hard-to-give gifts (the cousin who has everything, the colleague you do not know well, the parent who would never buy themselves something silly). For that customer it was indispensable.
What changed
What on Earth was caught in the same broad current that thinned the entire mid-market catalog field in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Paper costs climbed sharply; postage costs followed; novelty and gag-gift purchases that used to be impulse mailbox decisions migrated to phone screens and social-feed shopping. Several of the catalogs that shared shelf space with What on Earth in shoppers' hallway baskets — quirky gift books from the same broad genre — wound down in roughly the same window.
By around 2020, the print What on Earth mailer had become rare in mailboxes. We have not seen a new edition in circulation since then, and the brand's online presence has been quiet. As with several other catalogs of this kind, no formal closure was announced; the catalog simply stopped going to press.
Where to find the same kinds of gifts now
The good news for What on Earth's audience is that the genre — humorous, gift-able novelty merchandise that still feels well-made — is alive and well in print. A handful of related catalogs send free print issues with the same sensibility, and several were produced by the same broader catalog group that ran the What on Earth book.
- Things You Never Knew Existed — the closest direct successor and the catalog most longtime What on Earth shoppers will recognize immediately. Same kind of humor, same gag-gift sensibility, same focus on "this is exactly the gift for someone I cannot shop for." Print catalog still mails free.
- The Lighter Side — a gift-and-novelty book that has carried a similar tone since the late 1970s. Wider mix that includes some home and personal care alongside the gag gifts, but the editorial sensibility is What-on-Earth-adjacent.
- Bayberry Lane — slightly more home-decor-leaning but covers the inexpensive-gift-with-personality category nicely.
- Fingerhut — for shoppers who valued the wide-assortment / pay-over-time aspect of What on Earth, Fingerhut covers a lot of the same merchandise ground, though without the gag-gift emphasis.
If you have a specific What on Earth product in mind
If you came here looking for a specific item from a past What on Earth issue — a particular shirt slogan, a gadget you remember from the kitchen pages, a holiday novelty — we cannot point you back at the original. Those SKUs are not back in circulation. But the catalogs listed above carry close cousins, and a request through Catalogs.com will put the print copy in your mailbox within roughly a week. From there it is a fair bet you will find the same kind of unexpected, gift-able thing you remembered.
The What on Earth name itself may yet return — these brands sometimes do, under new ownership, after a few years quiet — and if it does we will update this page. For now, the best we can do is point the customer back at the kind of catalog they came looking for.
