Sam Goody comes to mind

We had a local toy store called King Normans. There was maybe 20 locations throughout the area.

Other mall type stores I miss.

Millers Outpost
Chess King - where I got most of my early 90's wardrobe
Contempo Casuals - where all the ladies were
Structure

eta: Blockbuster Music

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I used to love this place. Closed in 1988.

a lot of the ones I would have mentioned have been listed, but here's one I had as a kid that's gone now and hasn't been brought up

Just thought of a few more:

Kinney Shoes
Longs Drug store
Thrifty (was a Walgreens type store) .50s for 2 scoops of ice cream in a waffle cone!!!
The Federated - Shadoe Stevens ftw!


The Wherehouse

Ahh good one, I knew I was missing something. Back in the 80's they had a sister store too called Jefferson Ward. Most of the Jefferson Ward's were former Two Guys Department Stores (bankrupt in 1982) and then most of them turned into Bradlees in 1988.

While it still exists, Wal-Mart is certainly nothing like it once was.

I miss Johnny's Toys. There is none around where I live. Not sure if there are any around any more. I also loved Children's Palace and enjoyed Toys R Us so much more back in the day.

I used to get my Chuck Taylors at Monkey Wards in the early 90's for $20-25 a pair.

I added more photos to the original post.

You seriously are all like a bunch of old grandpas.

I remember back in my day.... I remember back in my day.....

I remember back in my day when ice cream was 2 scoops for 50 cents!!!

Back in my day, video game consoles could be taken apart with a NORMAL screw driver! Then you young-ins got that new hip SNES that you just couldn't disassemble without a fancydancy screwdriver.

For shame, Nintendo!

Hell yea man, I used to mail/phone order from McVans all the time and have them ship to me in Ohio.  Guys were always cool as shit and they may not have had the best prices around but they ALWAYS had what you wanted.

I always hear about funcoland but I never heard of one or saw one back then, but like 90% of the NES games I find at yard sales here are in funcoland sleeves, so there must have been one somewhere.

I remember getting all my Thundercats toys from Hills when I was a kid, now its an Office Depot, blech...

This thread is depressing

Suncoast always had a lot of niche stuff and was fun to browse. Most of them are gone now.

I love all the different logo styles that each stores had. It gave them character, something that is really lacking today. Everything is all homogenized, sleek and streamlined nowadays.

What a great post. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Thanks for reminding me about kids r us. when I was about 5-6 I got a 100 dollar gift card for my borthday and begged my mom constantly so I could go spend it. instead she took me to kids r us and bought me like 80 dollars worth of clothes. I didn't know she used my gift card. thought you could only use it at toys r us. when I found out I was pissed.

dat memories. There were 2 stores that I visited as a child for games. One, FuncoLand. It was located in a nearby mall, and that's where I just had to visit each time we went shopping. I visited that store from before I could be left alone there myself, all the way up until it was bought out and the store shut down, I was about 15.

The second one hasn't been mentioned yet: MediaPlay.



I vividly remember buying my first computer game there. Corncob 3D. I played the hell out of that game, that is until Wolfenstein 3D was released. I don't know how I talked my mother in to letting me get that game at such a young age, but I did. And it was good.

Haha what a terrible memory

I was going to say Piggly Wiggly but then I looked it up and it's still going on!

If it makes you feel any better retrogames12 I NEVER ever got even remotely a 100 dollar gift card from anyone growing up.  We didn't have much money and most of the time we got hand me down clothes or goodwill/thrift store clothing, so we actually got excited about new clothes because it happened so rarely.  I suppose it puts things into perspective.

Although, I definitely understand your disappointment, hehe, I mean c'mon, what 5 or 6 year old wouldn't be upset about that.

Oh, sorry to hear that. I still buy clothes from the thrift store!

Ah no prob hehe - I wasn't trying to make you feel guilty or bad or anything - I was just shocked to hear the $100 amount! And like I said, I can't blame a 5-6 year old for being upset about that. I mean, it's like bringing a kid inside the candy story and getting him excited about the candy then leaving, hah.

Wow, a lot of memories in this thread! Nostalgia is running wild. The thing that is most interesting to me though, is that I remember my family avoiding a lot of these stores due to constantly having issues with certain locations. Perhaps stunts like that is why some of them didn't stick around.

Service Merchandiser, for example, provided my family anything and everything less than service. My folks never had a lot of money when I was growing up, so if they saw something in a Service Merchandiser flier, perhaps they would go to get it...but there would always be problems, and we would waste hours trying to get things sorted out. One day my dad had enough and we never went back. Same with a lot of the other places mentioned.

So good memories, but seeing a lot of the names, no surprise.

Also, am I the only one here who, while having fun browsing through Kay Bee as a child, always thought they were crazy overpriced compared to the competition? It would seem their stuff would be $5 - $10 more than elsewhere, on action figured and the like, always. Then they would have a big sale and reduce the stuff to clear it out, and those would be the times I would buy from them. Not a really good business model I guess.

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Woo showbiz. I still have a token I kept from the last time I stepped into one of those.