Brands that were once popular....

[RandyS]

Oh, GOD, I loved Waldenbooks. There was one in every mall.

Yeah, I miss bookstores in malls, or bookstores period. We still have two Barnes & Nobles, or so I'm told, but our two Borders went south years ago.

I'm actually torn on bookstores. On the one hand, I miss them, but on the other hand, since I can no longer drive, and public transportation is a joke in Sacramento when it comes to people with disabilities, This is one case where I say thank God for things like Amazon.

 

[auntiehill]

^ I freakin' LIVE on Amazon, I love it, but it has changed the way we shop, that's for sure.

Our corner of the 'burbs has one Barnes and Nobles, about 20/30 minutes away, and one Half Price Books, possibly the most awesome store-chain that Texas ever created (suck it, Needless Markup).

I also remember Alpha Beta grocery stores--it was the store in the center of my town, back in elementary school. I even remember the commercials, "Alpha Beta: Tell a friend!" I think they ended being bought out by Safeway or Ralph's.

I always thought that was an odd name for a store. As a kid, I thought it was saying, "We have everything, from A to, um, B." But apparently, it was because the initial company would put goods on shelves in general alphabetical order but they kept the name long after they stopped doing that.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I always thought that Piggly Wiggly was the weirdest name for a supermarket. When I would visit family in Spartenburg SC, we would always visit PW just to say we went there. However they had awesome customer service, would carry everyone's bags to their cars. Coming from New Jersey it was a weird sight to see.

 

[tomalak301]

Hard Rock Cafe. Still have the menu I swiped from the Honolulu one in the 80s.

No idea how popular (or not) they are, but there are still some around.

What are popular restaurants now? I didn't know Hard Rock was so popular back in the day.

I should have been more specific.
From Warped9's OP:

but have long since become defunct, faded into obscurity or basically irrelevance.

I remember them more from the 80s when it was common to say "I want my, I want my, I want my MTV." I seem to remember lots of events at Hard Rock Cafes and ads for Hard Rock Cafe on that channel.

Ah, MTV, which also qualifies for the topic of this thread.

Ok, but that kind of strengthens my point about restaurants. The only "popular" restaurant I can think of was In N Out or various fast food places. I remember when Sizzler was popular (in the 90s) but while there are a few locations still, they too have faded into obscurity.

 

[Timby]

but our two Borders went south years ago.

Borders as a company went out of business four years ago.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I also remember Alpha Beta grocery stores--it was the store in the center of my town, back in elementary school. I even remember the commercials, "Alpha Beta: Tell a friend!" I think they ended being bought out by Safeway or Ralph's.

I always thought that was an odd name for a store. As a kid, I thought it was saying, "We have everything, from A to, um, B."

Makes a great name for a Lunar base, though:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG-0V-85H_0[/yt]

"SSHH!"

 

[RandyS]

but our two Borders went south years ago.

Borders as a company went out of business four years ago.

Oh, the whole company is gone? I didn't know that. I thought it was just our local ones, which come to think of it, closed just about four years ago.

 

[RoJoHen]

but our two Borders went south years ago.

Borders as a company went out of business four years ago.

Oh, the whole company is gone? I didn't know that. I thought it was just our local ones, which come to think of it, closed just about four years ago.

Yeah, Borders is gone. However, our old Borders was bought out by Books-a-Million, so there's still a good bookstore in that location.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

^ Doesn't Kirk have a Commodore PET in his apartment in ST III?

The Commodore PET was the very first computer I ever used. I wrote my first code on it, still remember it like it was yesterday. In fact the very first game I ever created was on the PET. It was a Lemonade Stand game. You had to buy lemons & sugar and make lemonade dependent on the weather forecast and previous sales. Man I loved that game, both making it and playing it.

Oh my gosh, I played that in grade school! On an Apple II GS!!

 

[USS Triumphant]

My list:

Department stores - Venture, K's Merchandise, Service Merchandise, Zayre, Osco Drug, Revco (which became CVS, but not the same).

Restaurants - Spinnakers, Chi Chis, Master Wang's, Po Folks, Duffs, Morrison's Cafeterias.

B. Dalton, and Walden Books were everywhere. We had a mall that had a B. Dalton, and two Waldens (or the other way around).

B. Dalton sort of equals Barnes and Noble through corporate mergers. The same thing is true of Waldenbooks and Borders - which means they're all gone, anyway. I think the companies decided that department store sized book stores were going to be "the future!" and migrated in that direction... just in time for Amazon to take off. I'm surprised Barnes and Noble is hanging on.

I remember that RC Cola had an equal amount of shelf space in the grocery store as Coke and Pepsi.

It might be a regional thing, but this is still true around here. Well, close - I think RC has about a quarter of the aisle, and Coke + Pepsi have the other three quarters. But I'd chalk that up more to RC not having as many varieties more than anything else.

The sodas I remember when I was a kid were TAB and Shasta; they were EVERYWHERE. Now I hardly ever see them.

You can still get Shasta at Big Lots, but aside from there, it seems like the only places I see it (and there, I see a LOT of it) are at hospitals and nursing homes. (I do a lot of work at those sorts of facilities.) Seems like they found a niche market to cater to.

I miss Babbages...

Babbages and Electronics Boutiques became GameStops. But I feel kind of sick even saying that. Out of our three GameStops in town, only one even has *a single end shelf* of PC games. :/

I miss Egghead. (Which is now Newegg.com, sort of - but not the same, either.)

I am surprised Kmart is still around.

Still around, and apparently thriving well enough to have been the big dog in merging with Sears a while back.

My first actual car which I never drove legally was a Pontiac and I used it as a down payment on a Mazda. No more Pontiac cars.

Ahem.

(But only kinda. They're at least officially licensed to do that by GM, though. )

I always thought that Piggly Wiggly was the weirdest name for a supermarket. When I would visit family in Spartenburg SC, we would always visit PW just to say we went there. However they had awesome customer service, would carry everyone's bags to their cars. Coming from New Jersey it was a weird sight to see.

I live in South Carolina. Still tons of Piggly Wigglys around here.

 

[Timby]

I'm surprised Barnes and Noble is hanging on.

I believe B&N is largely being propped up by having bookstores on a metric shit-ton of college campuses, and the margin on college textbooks is just ridiculous. But the company is still having issues because it spent a ludicrous amount of money on the Nook line, only have to go crawling to Samsung to get its readers made because B&N's own contractors couldn't make a device that didn't suck (and Samsung's tablets still suck).

 

[Melakon]

I first shopped at a B. Dalton around 1968, preferred them over Waldenbooks because they usually had a better selection of film and television books. Both disappeared from the mall nearest me here at the same time, never have found a place I liked better than B. Dalton. They even sold software for a while.

 

[Chris3123]

Circuit City, and then it went bankrupt leaving a bunch of big red empty facades all over. A Big Lots took the location of our local store.

Waldenbooks- Yes! I really miss these days where I could just drop by for a quick reading.

Oh, GOD, I loved Waldenbooks. There was one in every mall.

Same. That was a regular destination when I was in the mall.

I miss KB Toys.

There too.

ETA: Duh, how could I forget Blockbuster Video? Unfortunately, it was just inevitable for them and other video stores.

 

[Pondwater]

It took five pages. I can't believe I forgot about Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

 

[Catarina]

Kmart isn't too big as we lost ours. I want to cheer until I think about job losses.

Montgomery Wards closed when, 90s?

 

[Captain Ice]

How about Broadway Southwest, Mervyn's, J. W. Robinson's, and Goldwater's? All now known as Macy's.

Anyone else ever shop Incredible Universe?

 

[BK613]

^Yes. Incredible Universe now Fry's Electronics near where I live. I still will occasionally go there (PC cases for example.)

The talk about mall staples like Waldenbooks also brought to mind music stores like Tower Records, Sam Goody, and Camelot Music.

 

[auntiehill]

I think the same company owned Sam Goody and Suncoast Video; they closed nearly all the stores in one fell swoop.

I worked in a mall for years and freakin' LOVED Suncoast, although I could rarely afford to buy much since, you know, I worked in a mall. Still, it was one of the few places, pre DVD and pre-Google, where you could find Star Trek merchandise and videos.

I remember just wandering around the store, looking at the things I WANTED to buy, but couldn't.

 

[Owain Taggart]

^ Doesn't Kirk have a Commodore PET in his apartment in ST III?

The Commodore PET was the very first computer I ever used. I wrote my first code on it, still remember it like it was yesterday. In fact the very first game I ever created was on the PET. It was a Lemonade Stand game. You had to buy lemons & sugar and make lemonade dependent on the weather forecast and previous sales. Man I loved that game, both making it and playing it.

I hear it's coming back, in the form of a phone.
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-smartphone/

 

[Finn]

Kmart isn't too big as we lost ours. I want to cheer until I think about job losses.

I haven't seen a Kmart in a long while. There was one down the 495. But it appears to have closed