The people making those catalogs would've wet their pants with excitement if they could stuff 100x more crap in there. Lol
No, they wouldn’t — that’s the point of this entire thread. A catalog with 100x the pages and items would be useless, impossible to organize, and expensive to stock. The creators of those catalogs, who lest we forget, were at the forefront of their own tech revolution, were keenly aware of the limitations and possibilities of their tools.
I'd rather rely on online reviews. I'm pretty good at buying quality products sight unseen at this point. And with free returns, the risk is even lower.