Hoping to cut through the clutter of Christmas catalogues already filling mailboxes, the Hartmarx Corporation is presenting its holiday offerings on videotapes that will be mailed to 150,000 of the clothing company's best customers on Nov. 1.

The FICO score broadened the availability of credit to more consumers, and - there is a dark side to everything - enabled the marketing of those preapproved credit card offerings that fill mailboxes.

With these choices, Mr. Bloomberg is signaling that he is planning to do more than saturate the airwaves with commercials and fill mailboxes with literature.

He also flooded the airwaves and filled mailboxes with anti-abortion advertising.

Embittered by hard bargaining over the last police contract, the unions have spent $500,000 to fill television screens and mailboxes with attacks on Mr. Suozzi and his Democratic running mates.

Most major news magazines display unretouched news photographs next to advertisements featuring electronically altered pictures; promotional brochures, newsletters and pamphlets composed entirely on electronic imaging systems fill mailboxes.

Lillian Vernon First Lillian Vernon, whose catalogues have been filling mailboxes since 1951, has introduced Lillian Vernon's Kitchen, the company's first kitchenware catalogue.

"While I've seen notable improvements in the prospectuses prepared by some fund companies," he said, "far too many turgid, obtuse and unreadable documents continue to fill mailboxes and trash cans."

While only Citibank advertises on television nationally, thousands of other banks are filling mailboxes and crowding hotel check-out counters with their card offerings.

This is the time when retail catalogs fill mailboxes in anticipation of the holiday season.