Today while at an antique mall I came across this gem.



Check out that tag. Service Merchendise was a catalog department store that sold electronics, home goods, sporting goods, etc... that price tag really brought me back. I used to love that place as a kid.

Some others come to mind:

Woolworths: no explanation needed

Caldor and Bradlees: competing budget department stores that were sort of a precursor to Kohls or target type stores

Britches: preppy LL bean type store

A&S (Abraham & Straus) and Alexanders: Macy's competitors

Nodody Beats the whiz and Crazy Eddie's: New York metro area electronic stores

Showbiz Pizza: competitor to Chuck-E-cheese where the main character (animatronic) hillbilly bear

Comp-USA: heaven for computer nerds back in the day

Roy Rogers: burger and chicken fast food joints with fixin's bar so you basically constructed your own burgers (there might be some one off Roy Roger's still around along with some at rest stops.)

Let's hear yours.....

Dow Sound City (SoCal stereo shop)

The Warehouse

Tower Records

5&10

My wedding band came from Service Merchandise. Figured it would get beat up (it has), didn't make sense to sink a bunch of money into one.

I nominate Turtles Records and Tapes.

Johnny's Toys may have been a 1 off toystore in Grennhills Ohio.

You got a key mailed to you on your birthday and it opened up the special birthday room for you to pick a present.

Circuit City

Woolworths

There was a Johnny's Toys in Milford as well. Castle and all. the kids got a key every birthday.

Around Cincy:

Albers Grocery
Swallens
Sgt. Pants
Gentry
Thriftway
Steinbergs
Gidding Jenny
Toy House at the old Kenwood Plaza
Pogues
McAlpins
Cincinnati Sports
Gold Circle
Zayre
Walden Books
Brendamours
Peaches Records
Shillitos
Sight and Sound
King Kwik

I will come up with more.

Crazy Eddies

KB Toys. I preferred it over Toys-R-Us personally.

Up here we had a slew of discount stores that are all gone now... Freezes, Zayres, Ames, Rich's...

Zayre's
TG&Y (5 and dime)
S&H Greenstamps store
Dilly's Deli (Don't dilly-dally come to Dilly's Deli!)

Montgomery Wards!!
Brown's Dept Store!
Sears and Roebucks???????
Western Auto!


WOW

Zayre's, KB Toys, Circuit City, Tech HiFi (and all the other stereo equipment stores)

Monkey Wards and Woolworths come to mind.

Coast to Coast Hardware

This is a nostalgic topic for me.

I remember collecting glass pop bottles on the road-sides, and taking them to the local corner store for 5 cents each, and buying candy. Usually gum or some kind of stick hard-candy. This was about 45 years ago. It was a small corner store.

And then I subsequently had a paper route a few years later, and would buy candy on collection-days. I had a coin-counter on my hip, to sort the change. Tips were sparse and minimal. Seems like a different century, these days.

Oops..it was.

A bunch other posters listed. One that hasn't been posted was A&P which was a grocery store. I liked it because they sold chocolate licorice which is better than red licorice and orders of magnitude better than black licorice.

Western Auto
Otasco

TG&Y
Not sure about Fred's

I can't remember if this was a national chain or local here in Virginia, but growing up we always got catalogs from the Best stores. Watches, jewelry, bikes, and our parents would make a trip to Richmond for our "Santa" gifts.

Best stores
High's Ice cream shops

Browse through this list of defunct stores:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...of_the_United_States

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
Zayre's
TG&Y (5 and dime)
S&H Greenstamps store
Dilly's Deli (Don't dilly-dally come to Dilly's Deli!)

I forgot the Jitney Jungle!

Palmer's Video. First thing that came to mind.

Was there before Blockbuster. Been gone for decades now though.