I can't get enough of these pictures of old stores and malls. But, as someone who owns a store in a mall, seeing malls that haven't been remodeled since the '80s or before makes me really nervous now. I'm sitting there or walking through thinking "Oh no, owning a store in here would be really scary. This oldness will scare off the women and families." I'll be honest, before the mall we're in was remodeled a couple years ago the vacancy was pretty bad and the foot traffic wasn't all that good except for bored high schoolers. I remember being in there thinking, "This mall looks totally sweet being straight up 1987, but I'm not doing business with this place". Now after the remodel and the signing of a few new key tenants the mall is doing great and so are we. So I know what I think is neat and what the general public likes is vastly different.
So I know what I think is neat and what the general public likes is vastly different.
Same, and I recognize that, It is certainly very important to a retailer to remain current in every way imaginable. After another wave of closings last year, K-Mart has basically left my state entirely. When i was a kid there was a K-Mart in every town and many of them still had the old 70's style, but they were the dominant chain. I had never even heard of Wal-Mart until I saw one in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation as a kid. I don't think I ever even stepped foot in one until around 1995. My first memories of Nintendo come from seeing it at an old style K-Mart, and for me those will always be the golden days of retail. I love seeing things like old phones, registers, calculators, at the counters. The old K-Mart's also had so many glass windows compared to current ones.
A lot of times I think we really do destroy areas by constantly cluttering and remodeling them though.
For instance, these photos below are the same exact location in Georgia taken 30 years apart.
The 80's just looks so much more charming. That McDonalds would be a historical site had they not demolished it.
Amazing pictures being posted here. I must say, it is sad that some of these places no longer exist. It is even worse when I saw some pictures of K-Mart and some STILL look the same to this day!
In the first post at the top I had mentioned how growing up in my Grandparents town of Winsted, CT, there was a very small Toy Works in its own building out in the middle of nowhere. Until today I was never able to find much information about it at all online, but I finally found the article for when it closed. It turns out it was actually in the bordering town of Barkhamsted, Connecticut which is why I was struggling to find much. I had thought this location was never a KB Toys, but they did not close until January of 1999, which means KB did own the building the last few years it was open
Toys Wind Down At K-b Shop
Route 44 Store To Close After Nearly 40 Years
October 08, 1998|By KEVIN CANFIELD; Courant Correspondent
BARKHAMSTED — The K-B Toy Works store on Route 44, which has been open for nearly 40 years, will close in January.
Since it opened in 1959, the store has served area residents who went there for everything from coloring books to computer games.
John Reilly, manager of communications with K-B Toys, said the company has decided not to renew its lease on the site. The lease expires Jan. 24.
The store's 16 full- and part-time employees will be offered jobs with K-B, provided they are in good standing with the company, Reilly said.
Reilly called the move a "business decision'' and said the company would not elaborate on the reasons for closing the store.
According to town records, the 7,500- square-foot building is owned by Maria C. Sollitto and Agnes L. Santangelo, both of New Hartford. Neither could be reached for comment.
K-B, headquartered in Pittsfield, Mass., has been in business for more than 75 years. It has 14 Toy Works stores in the state and about 200 in the country, said Andrea Loncto, spokeswoman for K-B Toys. K-B has stores in the Torrington Plaza and the Farmington Valley Mall in Simsbury. One is also opening soon in the Westfarms Mall, Loncto said.
Asked if the company has plans to open another store in the area to replace the Barkhamsted store, Loncto said, ``We're always looking to expand so if an opportunity does arise we'd re-evaluate our priorities. But at this point in time we don't have plans to open another Toy Works in the area.''
``If the demand is there we will continue to look for another site in the area,'' Reilly said.
This is what this KB Toy Works looks like present day. It was an antique house in the 2000's before being a feed store.
The building was white back in the 90's, but otherwise, this is what it looked like. I'd still really love to find a vintage photo, this store was a big part of my childhood. It was just totally out in the middle of nowhere connected to no other stores, but it was on the way to my Grandparents house and it was always a stop we made. My final memory of being in this store as a Kay Bee Toy Works was reading a magazine that previewed WCW/nWo: Revenge for Nintendo 64 which would have been shortly before the store announced its closing in October 1998.
A former K-Mart employee saved and uploaded old K-Mart store soundtrack tapes from the '90's. They're soothing to listen to and I enjoy the advertisements. Why, yes, I do like to save on prescriptions and shop while they are filled.
A former K-Mart employee saved and uploaded old K-Mart store soundtrack tapes from the '90's. They're soothing to listen to and I enjoy the advertisements. Why, yes, I do like to save on prescriptions and shop while they are filled.
Haha this is funny. As a kid I used to joke to my parents that I wanted to grow up to be the guy that says, "Service is needed in layaway. Service is needed in layaway."
Service Merchandise was the shit. I loved that place. My mom used to take me to a place called Toy City in Cali. Place was amazing. I still remember the massive wall of GI Joe figures they had.
Toys R Us....the paper tags and remember seeing games like Chrono Trigger for $70 bucks. You would sometimes see carts over $60 bucks and at times if it was a popular title it was quite common. People complain about the prices on new games today and all the DLC....what other entertainment medium is still the same price since the 90's.
Babbages....1st time I saw a Panasonic 3DO and knew my parents would laugh if I asked for one with that price tag. Can honestly say even as a kid I knew better to even bother asking and couldn't believe they thought those units would move at 600 dollars.
Funcoland......always loved the store and wish I would have started collecting sooner. I was in college around this time and couldn't afford to collect or keep my stuff. I regret trading stuff in to help pay for the newest console when it would come out.
It never gets old seeing this thread Only the stores get older lol
I'm also very humbled as one of the pics is from my actual childhood Hollywood Video. Sure, I managed to snap a shot of it myself back in 2006 on a cold, rainy Monday night, but the shot Trj shared was in broad daylight across the street, and it just brings back so many fond memories for me. The early-mid '90s was great because you had enough technology to entertain (i.e. 16 bit consoles) but not yet enough technology to infiltrate the minds of youth (i.e. internet). It was a great time and seeing pictures of our old favorite stores from that time period is awesome!
That was really cool to see all these old pictures, brings back memories. I still vaguely remember my first game shopping experience, I don't know what store it was at but I remember how it looked inside, and going home with Moonsweeper and Oil's Well for Colecovision.
I still live near where I grew up, and the KMart nearby finally closed last year. I remember getting a Tetris wristwatch/game there. Back when the SNES was released, I used to ride my bike there and play Super Mario World until I got tired of standing. In the early 2000s when I was actively collecting I was surprised to find they still sold NES games, used ones, of course. They had multiple copies of Silent Service and Hunt for Red October, but I bought Street Cop that day because I'd never seen or heard of it before.
I remember Hills too. I think that was the store where I convinced my parents to buy me a Zelda bow and arrow toy, with the little suction cup arrows. Of course it was used up and broken long ago, I've never seen one of those anywhere since then.
Lowes Hardware is still around, but when I was a kid they were in a much smaller building. They had an electronics section with TVs, VCRs, keyboards, and.. Gameboy games. No other systems IIRC, just Gameboy. I remember buying Kirby's Dreamland there.
I definitely remember Children's Palace, that was really cool to see those pictures. We went there when they were having their closing sale, I think I bought a game but I don't remember what it was anymore.
The Showbiz Pizza building in Greenwood, IN still remains as a Chuck E Cheese, I've taken my kid there a few times recently. Pretty neat to see it in the same place, though it's obviously completely different inside.
Ah, and Funcoland.. that's where most of my NES collection was from. The employees there got to know me, a couple times when I walked in the guy said "hey, it's Mr. Nintendo!". I'd walk out with $150 worth of NES games, go to my buddy Nick's house and we'd spend the next few days playing every single one of them.
Back around '95 or so, my friend Andrew and I decided that we would go on a quest to find a Game Genie. We stayed up all night, walked to the mall and didn't find shit, but finally ended up at Toys R Us where it turned out they were having a clearance sale on their remaining NES stuff. No Game Genie was found, but I happily snatched up the only copy of Final Fantasy for $5. Other than that, they only had a massive row of Super Spike V'Ball, and a somewhat smaller row of Star Tropics. And I believe some Advantage controllers. I also bought a Gameboy 4-player pack thing, with F1 Race, RC Pro AM, 4-player adapter, and fanny pack. What was funny was that buying those ended up being exactly all the money I had, we were dead tired and really didn't want to walk home. Went to the store next door (which used to be Zayre, must have been changed to Ames by then), I walked up to the payphone getting ready to make a collect call, but I hit the coin return first, and damn near $3 in change dumped out of the coin return slot. So we were able to call for a ride home, haha. More hilarity happened that day, but I'll leave it that.
Wow. The Toys R Us with the Montgomery Wards was a few miles from my house in Gaithersburg Maryland. Such a cool pic with the old cars. These days I get my Amiibos from the exact same location! http://img.photobucket.com/albums...
Service Merchandise was the shit. I loved that place. My mom used to take me to a place called Toy City in Cali. Place was amazing. I still remember the massive wall of GI Joe figures they had.
I wonder if you went to the same Toy City I used to go to here in Southern California... it was actually right next to a Service Merchandise. I loved Toy City, it was 2 floors of awesomeness
Service Merchandise was the shit. I loved that place. My mom used to take me to a place called Toy City in Cali. Place was amazing. I still remember the massive wall of GI Joe figures they had.
I wonder if you went to the same Toy City I used to go to here in Southern California... it was actually right next to a Service Merchandise. I loved Toy City, it was 2 floors of awesomeness
I went to the one in Buena Park, I believe it was on Lincoln Blvd. There wasn't a service merchandise right next to it, but it was down the street a bit next to the Thriftys (rite aid).
Mega Games. $4 any NES game, and $20 CIB SNES games. I owe you the enjoyment of my youth. Now you have been bulldozed, and a park has gone up in your spot. Alas...
Comments
www.plaidstallions.com
King's Castleland - Whitman, Massachusetts (1975)
Old man checking Lego display (late 70's?)
Kay-Bee Toys Star Wars Display - Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Little House Toys - Phoenix, Arizona (1984)
Child World Videogames Display - Avon Massachusetts
Kay-Bee Toys (1983)
Macy's - New York City (1978)
Jefferson Ward (70's or 80's)
(1980)
(1980)
(1975)
Legoland (1976)
Toy City - Kansas City (1980)
Toy City - Kansas City (1980)
TG&Y (1982)
TG&Y (1982)
TG&Y (1982)
Thornberries (1980)
Circus World (1976)
Circus World (1970's)
Foley's - Houston, Texas (1973)
Child World (1976)
G.I. Joe display (1974)
Rich's (1980)
Gimbel's - Atari 2600 station (1980)
K&K Toys (1977)
K&K Toys - Virginia Beach, Virginia
King Norman's (1977)
Intellitoys - Los Angeles, California (1982)
Intellitoys - Los Angeles, California (1982)
Toy Magic - West Virginia (1973)
Toy Magic - West Virginia (1973)
The Game Player - Houston, Texas (1982)
The Game Player - Houston, Texas (1982)
The Game Player - Houston, Texas (1982)
The Game Peddler - Houston, Texas (1983)
The Game Peddler - Houston, Texas (1983)
The Game Peddler - Houston, Texas (1983)
(1976)
Woolworth's - New York City
Gandee's - Lakeland, Florida (1970's)
Children's Circus - New Orleans, Louisiana
Children's Circus - New Orleans, Louisiana
Woodward & Lathrop - Washington D.C. area
Toy Castle - Claremont, NH (1973 - this is the first town I ever lived in, NO IDEA where this was!)
Fiddlestix Toy Shop - Great Neck, New York
Kid's Kounty - Houston, Texas
Magic Village - San Jose, California
Magic Villiage Exterior - San Jose, California
Atari Games (1980's)
Playworld - Long Island, New York
Battlestar Galactica Display
Barbie Display
K-Mart Barbie Display - Delray, New Jersey
Heroes in Action Display
Two Guys Department Store - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mattel Slime Display
(1986)
Indianapolis, Indiana
Mattel Shogun Warriors Display
Playhouse Toys - Houston, Texas (1981)
Toy Shoppe - Phoenix, Arizona (1982)
Montgomery Ward (1977)
Originally posted by: Trj22487
Toy Castle - Claremont, NH (1973 - this is the first town I ever lived in, NO IDEA where this was!)
Wow, Google sure is an amazing thing. Ask a question and find an answer! I found a series of photos of just about
every major fire that has happened in Claremont, NH. Turns out the fire department intentionally burned this area for training in 1981!
I was not born until 1987 and had no idea this toy store ever existed. Looked like a great place.
Originally posted by: GCrites80s
So I know what I think is neat and what the general public likes is vastly different.
Same, and I recognize that, It is certainly very important to a retailer to remain current in every way imaginable. After another wave of closings last year, K-Mart has basically left my state entirely. When i was a kid there was a K-Mart in every town and many of them still had the old 70's style, but they were the dominant chain. I had never even heard of Wal-Mart until I saw one in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation as a kid. I don't think I ever even stepped foot in one until around 1995. My first memories of Nintendo come from seeing it at an old style K-Mart, and for me those will always be the golden days of retail. I love seeing things like old phones, registers, calculators, at the counters. The old K-Mart's also had so many glass windows compared to current ones.
A lot of times I think we really do destroy areas by constantly cluttering and remodeling them though.
For instance, these photos below are the same exact location in Georgia taken 30 years apart.
The 80's just looks so much more charming. That McDonalds would be a historical site had they not demolished it.
I feel like you are the type of collector that would appreciate my TRU display I made for my gameroom: http://imgur.com/a/hLJCy...
This is awesome
Toys Wind Down At K-b Shop
Route 44 Store To Close After Nearly 40 Years
October 08, 1998|By KEVIN CANFIELD; Courant Correspondent
BARKHAMSTED — The K-B Toy Works store on Route 44, which has been open for nearly 40 years, will close in January.
Since it opened in 1959, the store has served area residents who went there for everything from coloring books to computer games.
John Reilly, manager of communications with K-B Toys, said the company has decided not to renew its lease on the site. The lease expires Jan. 24.
The store's 16 full- and part-time employees will be offered jobs with K-B, provided they are in good standing with the company, Reilly said.
Reilly called the move a "business decision'' and said the company would not elaborate on the reasons for closing the store.
According to town records, the 7,500- square-foot building is owned by Maria C. Sollitto and Agnes L. Santangelo, both of New Hartford. Neither could be reached for comment.
K-B, headquartered in Pittsfield, Mass., has been in business for more than 75 years. It has 14 Toy Works stores in the state and about 200 in the country, said Andrea Loncto, spokeswoman for K-B Toys. K-B has stores in the Torrington Plaza and the Farmington Valley Mall in Simsbury. One is also opening soon in the Westfarms Mall, Loncto said.
Asked if the company has plans to open another store in the area to replace the Barkhamsted store, Loncto said, ``We're always looking to expand so if an opportunity does arise we'd re-evaluate our priorities. But at this point in time we don't have plans to open another Toy Works in the area.''
``If the demand is there we will continue to look for another site in the area,'' Reilly said.
This is what this KB Toy Works looks like present day. It was an antique house in the 2000's before being a feed store.
The building was white back in the 90's, but otherwise, this is what it looked like. I'd still really love to find a vintage photo, this store was a big part of my childhood. It was just totally out in the middle of nowhere connected to no other stores, but it was on the way to my Grandparents house and it was always a stop we made. My final memory of being in this store as a Kay Bee Toy Works was reading a magazine that previewed WCW/nWo: Revenge for Nintendo 64 which would have been shortly before the store announced its closing in October 1998.
From a 1993 Nintendo Promo
This is amazing
https://archive.org/details/@davismv#uploads-date-archived
Originally posted by: The Count
A former K-Mart employee saved and uploaded old K-Mart store soundtrack tapes from the '90's. They're soothing to listen to and I enjoy the advertisements. Why, yes, I do like to save on prescriptions and shop while they are filled.
https://archive.org/details/@davi...
Haha this is funny. As a kid I used to joke to my parents that I wanted to grow up to be the guy that says, "Service is needed in layaway. Service is needed in layaway."
Few that stood out....
Toys R Us....the paper tags and remember seeing games like Chrono Trigger for $70 bucks. You would sometimes see carts over $60 bucks and at times if it was a popular title it was quite common. People complain about the prices on new games today and all the DLC....what other entertainment medium is still the same price since the 90's.
Babbages....1st time I saw a Panasonic 3DO and knew my parents would laugh if I asked for one with that price tag. Can honestly say even as a kid I knew better to even bother asking and couldn't believe they thought those units would move at 600 dollars.
Funcoland......always loved the store and wish I would have started collecting sooner. I was in college around this time and couldn't afford to collect or keep my stuff. I regret trading stuff in to help pay for the newest console when it would come out.
I'm also very humbled as one of the pics is from my actual childhood Hollywood Video. Sure, I managed to snap a shot of it myself back in 2006 on a cold, rainy Monday night, but the shot Trj shared was in broad daylight across the street, and it just brings back so many fond memories for me. The early-mid '90s was great because you had enough technology to entertain (i.e. 16 bit consoles) but not yet enough technology to infiltrate the minds of youth (i.e. internet). It was a great time and seeing pictures of our old favorite stores from that time period is awesome!
I still live near where I grew up, and the KMart nearby finally closed last year. I remember getting a Tetris wristwatch/game there. Back when the SNES was released, I used to ride my bike there and play Super Mario World until I got tired of standing. In the early 2000s when I was actively collecting I was surprised to find they still sold NES games, used ones, of course. They had multiple copies of Silent Service and Hunt for Red October, but I bought Street Cop that day because I'd never seen or heard of it before.
I remember Hills too. I think that was the store where I convinced my parents to buy me a Zelda bow and arrow toy, with the little suction cup arrows. Of course it was used up and broken long ago, I've never seen one of those anywhere since then.
Lowes Hardware is still around, but when I was a kid they were in a much smaller building. They had an electronics section with TVs, VCRs, keyboards, and.. Gameboy games. No other systems IIRC, just Gameboy. I remember buying Kirby's Dreamland there.
I definitely remember Children's Palace, that was really cool to see those pictures. We went there when they were having their closing sale, I think I bought a game but I don't remember what it was anymore.
The Showbiz Pizza building in Greenwood, IN still remains as a Chuck E Cheese, I've taken my kid there a few times recently. Pretty neat to see it in the same place, though it's obviously completely different inside.
Ah, and Funcoland.. that's where most of my NES collection was from. The employees there got to know me, a couple times when I walked in the guy said "hey, it's Mr. Nintendo!". I'd walk out with $150 worth of NES games, go to my buddy Nick's house and we'd spend the next few days playing every single one of them.
Back around '95 or so, my friend Andrew and I decided that we would go on a quest to find a Game Genie. We stayed up all night, walked to the mall and didn't find shit, but finally ended up at Toys R Us where it turned out they were having a clearance sale on their remaining NES stuff. No Game Genie was found, but I happily snatched up the only copy of Final Fantasy for $5. Other than that, they only had a massive row of Super Spike V'Ball, and a somewhat smaller row of Star Tropics. And I believe some Advantage controllers. I also bought a Gameboy 4-player pack thing, with F1 Race, RC Pro AM, 4-player adapter, and fanny pack. What was funny was that buying those ended up being exactly all the money I had, we were dead tired and really didn't want to walk home. Went to the store next door (which used to be Zayre, must have been changed to Ames by then), I walked up to the payphone getting ready to make a collect call, but I hit the coin return first, and damn near $3 in change dumped out of the coin return slot. So we were able to call for a ride home, haha. More hilarity happened that day, but I'll leave it that.
Originally posted by: Salduchi
Wow. The Toys R Us with the Montgomery Wards was a few miles from my house in Gaithersburg Maryland. Such a cool pic with the old cars. These days I get my Amiibos from the exact same location! http://img.photobucket.com/albums...
Nice!
Service Merchandise was the shit. I loved that place. My mom used to take me to a place called Toy City in Cali. Place was amazing. I still remember the massive wall of GI Joe figures they had.
I wonder if you went to the same Toy City I used to go to here in Southern California... it was actually right next to a Service Merchandise. I loved Toy City, it was 2 floors of awesomeness
Service Merchandise was the shit. I loved that place. My mom used to take me to a place called Toy City in Cali. Place was amazing. I still remember the massive wall of GI Joe figures they had.
I wonder if you went to the same Toy City I used to go to here in Southern California... it was actually right next to a Service Merchandise. I loved Toy City, it was 2 floors of awesomeness
I went to the one in Buena Park, I believe it was on Lincoln Blvd. There wasn't a service merchandise right next to it, but it was down the street a bit next to the Thriftys (rite aid).