JCC The Everything Retro Thread

Sort of amazing how this flier from 1986 doesn’t look that different from a Toys R Us flier in 2017 shortly before the store ended. Fonts, layout, and colors are fairly locked in until the end.

A flier from 1980 would look so different. Maybe that’s just inductive of print hitting its stride or maybe there is a greater message about the decline of retail as a physical location.

Hard to believe toy stores are gone.

We’ll always have Home Depot and Lowe’s….right?

 

I still have my copy of these LPs from Sears (more specifically, the late, lamented store in Watchung, NJ):

 

That's so cool you have that music on vinyl. @Kenneth Morgan

This piece is brilliant!

 

I'm pretty sure I got it shortly after it was first aired on TV. It might've been an early Christmas present.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that this observation is one I am going to struggle to communicate (or maybe the truth is, there is less here to communicate than I THINK there is)...

I don't know the specific whys and wherefores behind the "failures" of toy stores - and I am being lazy not seeing what's been written about that, as I am sure at least something has (online alternatives? big box stores? whatever)... but in the context of missing them...

I was in a bookstore the other day and I was thinking about how I love browsing in a book store. The experience of walking into a bookstore, of browsing around, of never being sure what you might come across down the next aisle or tucked away on a back shelf (especially in an independent bookstore - not knocking Barnes and Noble, I quite enjoy those too). Apart from whatever I mighty find and buy, I find the experience of browsing in one, being in one, a pleasure, in and of itself.

None of which pays the bills, right?

And I felt the same about TOYS R US, or Kiddie City, or the more or less local Kiddie World, or KayBee, etc. They were just fun to visit, to browse through. The experience of just walking through one was fun.

It's one reason I TRY to buy at least SOMETHING anytime I am in a bookstore, or a local comic book shop, etc. ALmost like a "browsing fee", if that makes any sense.

 

@SHAD0W-JEDI

We know the toy business is struggling today compared to the pre-smart phone world of the 80s, 90s, and 00s.

Apparently the demise of Toys R Us was hastened by investors who profited by its collapse and liquidation of assets.

The company had major debt issues resulting in its stock being downgraded in 2005. A year later the chain was bought out by three investment / realest estate firms and taken private. Those firms made money cashing out Toys R Us.

 

Starting earlier today, this became retro...

 

@SHAD0W-JEDI If you want an explanation for what happened to Toys R Us watch Goodfellas. The scene where Ray Liotta convinces Paulie to get into the restaurant business is essentially what private equity firms did to the toy chain. They bought the chain, ran up as much credit as they could & then sold everything for pennies on the dollar. Instead of torching it they just declared bankruptcy.

I loved our local Toys R Us. I loved going there as a kid and I liked it even more when I had kids. They had fun events for TFA & TLJ where my kids got to build movie inspired legos & they got to take home some fun swag. The remnants of that actual store can be seen in the Amazon series Utopia. Seeing it I feel just like the restaurant owner Sonny "****** shame".

 

Same thing happened to Sears and those investors bought K-Mart too in a merger to really run up the debt.

Game Stop and Cinemark were two more companies being setup for the Goodfellas treatment but individual investors foiled those plans.

 

Sears really ****ed up. They should have been Amazon. A long time ago in this very galaxy everyone used to get the Sears catalog. Kids would pour over the toy pages so they could tell Santa what they wanted. Moms could check out school clothes for the little ones, home appliances or the latest in suburban fashion. Dads could see what new tech could go with the current hi fi and the tools to install it. You could order directly from the catalog or wait until the items became available in the stores.

With this catalog Sears had your name, address, a history of what you purchased, and how much you spent. They had all the information on consumers that everyone craves right now. They just needed it all digitized. Get some coders to build you a database, a bunch of data entry and that info would have been worth billions. Unfortunately their leadership never saw that far ahead.

Sears headquarters is fairly close to where I live. They had a sale a few months back of all their old AV equipment. I went to have a look and it was just depressing.

 

Sears took its eyes off the prize decades earlier becoming more preoccupied with credit lending than being a retailer. It’s already hard to see what’s going on from the top but Sears wasn’t even looking. The bankers and investors who cashed out the company were already running it for years.

NPR ran a story when Sears bought K-Mart that told exactly what would happen over the next ten year - which is exactly what did happen. There was no attempt to save the retailers.

I’d think being a biggest retailer would help stave off that ending but it made Sears all the more desirable as a target.

 

I remember doing these back in my radio announcing days. As in I'd set up the intro & outro (and occasionally read them myself) and push the signal button. I only had to do it for real once, during a blizzard.

 

I used to work for Macy's in the 90's. Actually Stern's, but they were owned by macy's.
Toy's R Us was great. I remember in the late 90's they had two TV's, one where you could play Mario 64 and one where you could play Crash Bandicoot on the PS One. I ended up buying both.

 

My wife - who’s a librarian- got one of those Dewey catalogs from a library that was closing and we used it as a coffee table.

It was solid as an oak tree. With all the drawers (about 40 of them) it must have weighed a good 500 lbs. Eaay. The inside support structure looked like a labyrinth of wood and metal, that resembled the fortress of solitude from Superman.

We only had it a year before we sold it.

 

I was driving down what I would describe as a KINDA back road, or at least a road that was probably pretty heavily trafficked before the opening of an expressway, and passed a hotel/motel whose sign advertised COLOR TV. Below it, an additional sign talked about free Wi-Fi, etc. Given the Wi-Fi sign AND the fact that the basic sign didn't look a thousand years old, I am guessing they keep it/renew it exactly because it looks "retro". Definitely made me look twice.

 

After brief a moment when those card catalogues cabinets were being given away or thrown out they’ve become quite a collectible and can sell for considerable money.

 

Used them in tech college and on my first couple of computer jobs..

 

Used them in high school. I'm pretty sure they're boxed up, along with the disc drive, somewhere. For a while, my brothers kept the punch cards they used for computer class in the early 70s.

 

We were still using those when I started my library job, back when Reagan was President. The actually cabinets & drawers are long gone, but we still have loads of the catalog cards for notes & scratch paper.
And I still remember the Dewey classifications.

 

Dewey system’s not used anymore?!?!??

I had no idea. What’s the current system?

 

No, it's still being used. I just have them memorized so I have an idea where to find a book without having to check the catalog.