Mulberry Bush celebrates its 30th birthday in 2026. We started in 1996, and just a year later we produced and sent out our first catalogue to customers.
That makes our collection of old catalogues a rather good record of how Mulberry Bush has changed over the past three decades. The covers have been redesigned many times, our logo has changed, the way people shop has changed enormously and, of course, plenty of toys have come and gone.
So, for our 30th birthday, we went back through the archive to look at the Mulberry Bush catalogues from 1997 through to our latest 2026 edition.
Where it all began in 1996
Jonathan and Shirley Copeland founded Mulberry Bush in 1996, initially operating from a spare room in the family home in Sussex.
In those early days, Jonathan and Shirley took toys to fairs and shows, set up stalls, and met customers face-to-face. As the mailing list grew, mail order became an increasingly important part of the business.
And for a mail-order toy company, one particularly important way to show customers what was available was the catalogue.
The first Mulberry Bush catalogue went out in 1997.
Looking at those earliest catalogues reminds you how different shopping was before buying online became part of everyday life. Customers could sit down with the catalogue, browse the toys and gifts, choose what they wanted and place an order without ever visiting a shop.
The early Mulberry Bush catalogues
The covers from the late 1990s and early 2000s look very different from the Mulberry Bush catalogues we produce today.
The earliest editions use simple layouts filled with individual product photographs. As the years pass, the covers become brighter and increasingly packed with toys, but the Mulberry Bush name and burgundy colour remain a familiar sight across much of this period.
By this point, the catalogue had become an important part of how customers found and ordered from Mulberry Bush. The company continued to grow steadily, moving on from the spare room where it had started while remaining based in Sussex.
Looking inside the old catalogues is particularly interesting. Toys and trends have changed considerably, but plenty still feels surprisingly familiar.
Mulberry Bush goes online
As the catalogue and mailing list grew, another major change was taking place in the way people shopped.
In 2000, just four years after Mulberry Bush began, we received our first order through our website.
For a business that had grown through fairs, shows and mail order, selling online gave customers a completely new way to find Mulberry Bush and place an order. It also marked the beginning of a relationship between the catalogue and online shopping that continues today.
The catalogue remained an important part of the business, while the website gradually became a bigger part of how customers browsed and bought our toys and gifts.
A colourful new look for the catalogue
The website's arrival didn't mean the catalogue stopped evolving. By the mid-2000s, the covers were becoming much more colourful.
Then came a particularly noticeable change. From 2007, the covers took on a much more graphic style, with photographs of toys arranged around the circular Mulberry Bush tree logo and set against colourful backgrounds. Looking at the 2006 and 2007 editions side by side, the difference is striking.
The circular design continued for a few more years before the covers changed again in 2010. Product photography remained at the heart of the designs, but the layouts, backgrounds and decorative elements continued to evolve.
By the early 2010s, the covers had become bolder and more colourful, bringing together large collections of toys against bright backgrounds.
2013 and 2014 brought more changes
The early 2010s were another important period in Mulberry Bush's history.
In October 2013, Mulberry Bush acquired Letterbox, another long-established children's gift business with a similar focus on traditional toys and a particular specialism in personalised gifts.
Then, in 2014, Mulberry Bush introduced the logo we still use today, replacing the older tree logo that had appeared on the catalogue for several years.
The website also changed significantly. Fourteen years after Mulberry Bush first went online, we launched a new website on a modern ecommerce platform in 2014.
By then, the catalogue and website had already worked alongside one another for more than a decade. As online shopping continued to grow, the balance between the two gradually shifted, but the catalogue remained an important way for customers to browse the range at home.
The catalogue in an increasingly online world
As more customers began shopping online, the catalogue remained an important part of Mulberry Bush.
The covers continued to change too.
The years after the new website brought another shift in catalogue design. From 2014 to 2018, product photographs were generally arranged against clean white or single-colour backgrounds, with decorative graphic elements adding interest around them. These simpler backgrounds kept the toys as the main focus of each cover.
Around 2019, the covers began to change again. Rather than arranging the product photographs against more graphic backgrounds, the toys began to be placed within colourful scenes, giving each cover its own setting. This style continued into the early 2020s, with the scenes changing from one catalogue to the next.
There is something particularly enjoyable about seeing all of the covers together. Design styles change, different types of toys move in and out of fashion, and the way products are photographed and presented evolves, but each one represents another season of toys being chosen, photographed, designed, printed and eventually delivered through customers' letterboxes.
Nearly 30 years after the first catalogue
Our more recent catalogues have continued to evolve.
The 2024 editions introduced another style change, followed by the bold Toys, Gifts & Games covers of 2025.
And that brings us to 2026.
This year's catalogue marks 30 years since Mulberry Bush began. Put it next to that very first catalogue from 1997, and quite a lot has changed.
Today, customers can browse and order thousands of toys and gifts online, while our catalogue offers a carefully selected collection of products to browse at home. Over the years, Mulberry Bush has dispatched more than 2.5 million toys, gifts and games to families in the UK and beyond.
The catalogue remains an important part of our marketing and still accounts for a significant part of our sales. Nearly three decades after the first edition was posted to customers, it still lands on doormats around the country.
The next chapter for the Mulberry Bush catalogue
When Jonathan and Shirley started Mulberry Bush in 1996, shopping online wasn't an option. Just four years later, in 2000, we received our first website order, and the catalogue and online shopping have been working alongside one another ever since.
Today, our website naturally plays a much bigger part in how customers find us and place their orders. But we're rather pleased that there is still a place for the printed catalogue too.
As we've written about before, there's still a simple joy in sitting down with a toy catalogue, turning the pages and choosing favourites.
Looking back over our catalogue covers is something we've really enjoyed as a team, although choosing a favourite would be particularly tricky. Each year, we try to improve on the last and create something different while still making sure it feels like Mulberry Bush. There's a little bit of us and what we love in every design, which makes sharing the finished catalogue with our customers something we look forward to each year.
For some customers, receiving a new Mulberry Bush catalogue has been part of Christmas and present shopping for many years. For others, this year's might be the first one they've received. Either way, we hope they enjoy seeing the latest catalogue land on their doorstep as much as we enjoy creating it.
And the 2026 edition certainly won't be our last.
Ps. Check out our reel showing the catalogue cover design timeline.
