There was a nearby Circuit City where I bought Kingdom Hearts II, which is still my all-time favorite video game. When it closed, it became a Toys R Us, so I ended up experiencing heartbreak twice with the same building. Currently it's a gym, and it disgusts me every time I see it. Cue Harry Potter shouting "How dare you stand where he once stood!"
Huh, I also have a local gym that used to be toysrus that used to be a circuit city up until around 2011 according to google maps. I still miss that toyrus, grew up going to it a lot from the early 2010’s up until its closure. Everytime I see that gym, I stare at it in disdain. Either it’s a crazy coincidence, or it really is a small world.
They didn't sell LEGO?! No wonder they went out of business. Actually, it does make sense when you consider Lego was on the decline in the mid to late 90's and even tried making nonconstructibal sets during that time. May we all thank Bionical and Star Wars for dragging them out of that rut and into the current "Adults only" rut they're in now.
@@ArsonRaboot Absolutely true, that was during their “dark ages”, lol. Makes sense! It’s amazing how LEGO rose from those ashes ti where they are today. Like you said, Star Wars helped them hold on…
I remember when my local mall used to be a proper mall. It had a Target, an FYE, a Justice, a GameStop, you name it, it was there. Then one day the Target shut down, and it all went downhill from there. All the major retailers would drop like flies throughout the years, with the last major store loss being Carson's. Now all that's left are a Spencer's and a Bath and Body Works. Honestly, it blows my mind at the fact those two stores somehow managed to survive what felt like a retail apocalypse. It wouldn't surprise me if that corpse of a mall turns into one big Spirit Halloween someday.
What's sad is that it happened to my Mall, too. Although it was in a mostly low-income area, it thrived really well and had a lot of cool shops. But around 6 or 7 years ago, they closed the Sears, which was main store. It ended having a negative impact on the store and it started going down hill. Then they also closed the Macy's during the last year and it's starting to get worse. It is a lot more empty and less active now. The biggest stores there nowadays are TJ Maxx and Albertson's.
Speaking of Carson's (also known by it's full name, Carson Pirie Scott), I remember going to the locations here in the Chicago area back in the 2000s-2010s. All of them have since closed back in 2018, and the ones at 2 shopping malls I went to (Randhurst Mall (now Randhurst Village) and Harlem Irving Plaza) are now multiple businesses.
one singular mall took out like all of the competition here. The last proper mall recently closed down, but while it was struggling to stay afloat the best store it had was JcPennys. Everything else were random small businesses and some other non-anchor stores.
Toys R Us is super nostalgic to me [I'm glad they're making a comeback in Macy's], and my mom remembers going to Aladdin's Castle, Suncoast, and KB Toys, where she later worked at a few years before I was born. I wish Aladdin's Castle, KB Toys and Zany Brainy had stuck around, despite me never having the chance to go to any of them. On a different note, I've become interested in defunct restaurants, especially defunct animatronic restaurants, and the story of Captain Andy's River Towne is so interesting and full of lost media.
I remember Lazer Quest being a source of childhood trauma. The location near me had an image of an alien smashing through the wall in one of the first rooms you went into, it scared me so badly that I even had nightmares about it.
God, I remember having a Lazer Quest in my hometown back in the day, and it was so popular that the kids in my elementary school used to pass around an urban legend about a killer named Bloody Joe that stalked the play area. That made my imagination run wild as a kid, and led to many nightmares involving a creature that was never given a proper description aside from the name.
A fun missing detail from this video: old Circuit City commercials would end with a jingle & a CGI animation of a giant plug flying through the air, and plugging into the ground in the front of the store, as if that red tower on the front of every store was a giant plug. Lol.
Omg, thank you for bringing up Lazer Quest! We had a location in Arizona I grew up with that me and my dad went to multiple times. I LOVED how it was everyone against everyone and that you could choose your own code name and the atmosphere of everything was so cool. I remember going to a part of the arena that had mirrors, but didn’t know it at first; so when I saw movement, I shot at it and it reflected back to my freakin’ eyeballs, lol. We then moved to Oregon when I was 13 and the closest LQ was up in northern Washington. I contacted their Facebook page at about 20 years old and they said that they were expanding all the time and were looking into an Oregon location. Then 2020 happened. I was incredibly sad they all closed, but I find it really cool that you commemorate the place in your username - like carrying a little trophy every time you post a video.
Shout out to Movie Gallery. I used to rent a lot of N64 and GameCube games from that place. Going there on a Friday night after playing a baseball game after stopping by either a pizza place or McDonald's. While my family watched there movies with the lights off, I'm in my room playing Smash Bros Melee or Mario Strikers. It's those nights I'll never forget. I still have the one game I bought when they closed, Luigi's Mansion on GameCube. Today the building still lives on as a Worlds Finance.
Omg yes movie gallery! I rented a lot of games there too, and when our local one closed my dad took us to buy some of the games they were selling off for cheap. It's how I got pokemon diamond and animal crossing city folk.
In AZ, we had Tower Records, McFrugals, more Radio Shacks than people, Virgin megastore, Zany Brainy, Video Update/Hollywood Video/Blockbuster, KB/Toy World, and the last FYE recently turned into a funko/edgy button and patch store.
As someone who grew up in New Jersey, one of my childhood staple stores was Ricky’s Candy, Cones and Chaos. I didn’t go there often, but it was always a real treat. I even remember having my 6th birthday party there, and how surprised I was to be taken out of the party room and allowed to choose a free toy from the merch stand! The day I found out it was closing was a rough one. I’ve been to similar candy stores since then, but none have had quite the same magic as Ricky’s.
Looooove that you covered this! Your comment about never decoding super stylized logos as a kid is so real. It’s funny how foreign so much seems when you are super young and don’t have much context. We remember the f.y.e at the King of Prussia Mall…they used to have events there where they’d bring musicians in to perform. Thank you for the memories!!!
I remember as a kid going to Circuit City, Blockbuster Video, EB Games, Suncoast, Justice (as they had Webkinz plushes there), Discovery Channel Store, and KB Toys. All of these stores no longer exist today, but one surviving last Blockbuster Video is still open in Bend, ON. I remember seeing a Sam Goody location in my local shopping mall, later it became FYE and it closed and the former location was transformed into a food court, it's now in the first level in my local shopping mall. Disney Store, as well as Suncoast, and Sam Goody still exists, but only a handful of locations that are still open elsewhere in the US. I remember seeing CompUSA and Club Libby Lu locations as well.
As a Canadian, every GameStop in my city was known as EB Games up until pretty recently, when they all rebranded. We also still have a dedicated Toys R Us here, although they no longer sell video games unfortunately.
Most shocking takeaway from this video is the mention of those weasl toys, like OMG I have not thoguht of those in YEARS but those used to be on display everywhere!! Would love to see more videos like this about various dosages of nostalgia! You have such a great relatable and chill way of covering this kind of stuff!
I love content like this. Fascinating to check out other folks' nostalgic places. I have many of my own, that while different occupy the same place in my memory.
The Strawberries at Downtown Crossing in Boston was 5 floors! The fifth floor was my favorite- all clearance cds, promos, and stuff they were supposed to send back to labels but didn't. It was the best
My favorite defunct store was called Media Play and it was so cool. I had only gone there a handful of times when I was super young before they closed down but man it was awesome in there. They had a movie theater in back and everything. I remember dropping my older brothers off there to see The Two Towers there but me not being old enough to stay but seeing the movie play on screen as I walked by and left with my mom. I actually don’t even remember much of the stuff they actually had in the store but just the feeling of being there is so nostalgic.
Virgin Megastore was practically my childhood/teenhood, but I only knew the ones in other countries like France, UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, but the first Kuwait branch was really quite something during the 2000s, but I wasn’t as pop culture and media savvy back then, so I kinda missed like half-a-million miles of fun back then. I remember getting the Futurama S3 DVD boxset back in ‘06, I remember browsing around the store a lot, but my memory’s a bit faded because I only remember certain parts of the store and there were times when they rearranged the store (and would eventually downsize after a brief closure in ‘07 due to governmental censorship). I also remember having a shopping spree there for my 15th birthday back in ‘09; which was awesome. There was also this one time where they sold some comics that were not sold in any other place, which was really interesting to see, but I didn’t get to buy any. Eventually the store would close down on March 31 2012 (just 9 years after the store originally opened). I remember visiting the store for the last time on one of its last days and the shelves were practically empty, but what really stood out to me was that some of the DVD movies they had were still sold at full price when everything else was on clearance! Virgin Megastore would come back again to Kuwait on February 23 2020, but it wasn’t the same store as it was (no physical media, but it seemed like they sold books for a very brief period), and it opened in a different mall. Surprisingly, the store managed to survive the Lockdowns, but would only last for 4 years before closing down once again.
Ive recently gone to the Suncoast and Radio Shack that still exists in NC - the Suncoast basically looks like any FYE inside now and the Radio Shack mostly sells like RC cars on display it seemed. I went to Sam Goody & Suncoast growing up (grew up in CA) & recall those being the few places to find Anime VHS tapes as a pretty young kid. Still remember staring at Kimba and Magic Knight Rayearth VHS tapes there and a Ryo-oki plush from Tenchi Muyo. Pokemon came out around when I was in middle school and recall Electronics Boutique having import Pokemon Tomy figures and being so excited to see Mew figures/ stuff before the 1st movie (this was at Arden Fair Mall EB in Sacramento) Toys R Us was like a maze walking inside and I remember taking tickets to the register for video games and then waiting at the glass shielded area after to pick them up. I have tons of memories there including watching Jungle Cubs on VHS in the back and playing Parappa the Rapper on a PSone kiosk 😂 my brother would get the Power Ranger & Sailor Moon trading cards there out of the quarter machines. I have been to the Macys popup as well as Toys R Us in Canada last year. I believe NJ has a full Toys R Us again still i want to visit. I went to KB Toys & that was nostalgic for me. They always had those weazel balls & electronic puppys that hopped & did back flips at the front on a white enclosed table running. Thats where I got a lot of obscure toys: mostly Kenner branded Littlest Pet Shop on clearance often. Then eventually Digimon, Pokemon, Monster Rancher figures. I got some Gundam Wing pilot figures & a McFarlane Akira Kaneda toy. X-men vs Streetfighter figure packs. Spice Girl lollipops that came with stickers. I didn't really ever get video games there because they were just always locked behind the register and hard to look at but I remember seeing the Sega Genesis model 3 in the case shortly before they went out of business. We would even go to KB Toys Express which was an outlet version.
I distinctly remember the Geoffrey's stores. They were an off-shoot of Toys R Us based on the giraffe mascot, and their main focus was video games. I'm pretty sure the display unit in there was the first time I played Psychonauts.
My personal favorite defunct stores that closed/changed when I lived near them were an EB Games that became a GameStop, a Hasting's that I think is still abandoned, and the legendary K-Mart. I still have, of all things, an Angry Birds plush from K-Mart, the yellow bird Chuck to be specific.
KB Toys I remember, they were almost going to revive it, but it was probably canceled. Circuit City I remember too. And I do remember going to Noodle Kidoodle when they had it at either Crossgates or Colonie Center Mall in Albany. I'm surprised you didn't mention the Discovery Channel store, since that's a store I miss.
Oh my god, I never expected to see capital region malls in the comments here. I'm pretty sure Noodle Kidoodle was at Crossgates though? My brain is fuzzy because I was a kid though. I just vaguely remember going there, then to... I think the Warner Bros store? That or it was the original incarnation of the Disney store. God, what a blast from the past.
In the mid-late 90's, Comp-USA was our go-to spot for family desktop computers. Circuit City seemed more like the forerunner to Best Buy, as the destination for buying new TV's. I remember watching half of Back to the Future 3 in a Circuit City while my parents were shopping around.
I remember when EB Games was renamed in Canada to GameStop in the last few years, but both brand names were very much present, especially EB Games itself. Speaking of which, I remember going to both Blockbuster and Future Shop before they closed their doors, and the latter especially being merged or shuttered by Best Buy. I also know that HMV also shuttered across the country, got bought out by Sunrise Records, almost all of them rebranded to that, but some rebranded to FYE as well more recently. (Heck, they even opened a section of HMV at some Toys R US, still around and open too!) Lastly, I kinda wish I even went to Laser Quest before they shuttered, since there was a location I could've gone to...
I remember Laser Quest! I had my 14th birthday there. This was in Spokane, WA. After Laser Quest closed here, a local employee of Laser Quest (he was employed for 18 years) leased the building, kept the original castle maze in tact, and reopened as Laser Maxx :D
Its so weird to me that toy r us is apparently gone and many americans miss it alot. However I am from Canada and I still see many locations open and still selling toys. In fact, I still go there often to see some cool stuff they have. Honestly I feel privileged considering I can still go to the place that many can't
Toys R Us still exist with it's own stores, they're in the middle east. I was pleasantly surprised to see a Toys R Us in Kuwait. The one I saw was at a very nice mall called the 360 mall, the store was stocked with name brand toys it was nice. I saw a little sign behind the register and apparently there are stores in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Baharain, and Qatar if I remember correctly.
I actually worked at Circuit City during the exact era you described, with the standing GameCube demo kiosks. i worked there for approximately 9 months before moving on to something better, and that GameCube demo disc NEVER changed! Mario Party 5, FZero GX, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, 1080 Avalanche, Pokemon Colosseum, Kirby Air Ride, Harry Potter Quiddich World Cup, Spongebob Squarepants: Battle For Bikini Bottom, NBA Live 2004, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars Rogue Squadron, P.N. 03, Mario Kart Double Dash and Sonic Heroes. I think there was also some like E3 behind the scenes video that played, and Marilyn Manson was in it for a hot second and talked about doing some music for the Resident Evil movie. There was also an Aladdin's Arcade in my local mall but that was when I was far younger. Very first arcade I ever saw, and every stereotype you think of when you think of arcades. Dimly lit, mostly illuminated by all the screens, loud as fuck, tickets, prizes, what have you. That was my first exposure to Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, began a life long love affair. It was right across from the movie theater, which ALSO had it's own, much smaller arcade. At first we payed it no mind, but they got Super Street Fighter 2 first, so it quickly became more of a hangout. The malll had been there since I first moved to the area as a child, like late 80's, and closed up in like 96 or 97. A different, less local mall had a Suncoast Video in it, and that's where I first found Final Fantasy 7 and 8 action figures, and it was at that point, probably the best day of my life! XD I remember being in the very Suncoast, weighing the very difficult decision of buying a PlayStation or a Sega Saturn. The clerk was really trying to sell me on the Saturn because I guess he thought it was the more powerful system. I remember him citing X-Men vs. Street Fighter as having it's tag team functionality intact on the Saturn, while it was phased out for the PlayStation release, which FELT like a huge deal to me at the time, but also, the Saturn did NOT have Bushido Blade or Final Fantasy 7, which was an even BIGGER deal! One of the other defunct businesses I always wished would get covered by this, or a similar channel is the Bullwinkle's restaurant. It's not 100% defunct, there are apparently 3 locations left in the world, but none of them are anywhere near me anymore. Closest one is a 6 hour drive away. but they used to be all over. It is exactly the kind of thing it sounds like. Like Chuck-E-Cheese, but with Bullwinkle characters instead. I don''t remember if the food was any good, but it had a great arcade.
The defunct stores I remember from a kid were zellers mainly. But I had 2 unique ones. There was a Pokémon store that only lasted for a year tops here and left with no notice everyone guessed Nintendo sent a ceise and disist letter. But the sign remains on the store to this day and it’s been boarded up for 20+ years. Then inside my local super market was the sketchiest store possible had all kinds of imported stuff and everything trading cards and nerdy at the time. That lasted about 5 years. It was so dark compared to the whole store and I got a bunch of yugioh cards and beyblades there
One of the last Suncoasts used to be in the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, NJ up until the mall's closing earlier this year. I lived down there for a while and it was always a treat to go and see what they had in stock - a major nostalgia bomb at every turn.
Man, FYE just isn’t the same as it used to be, it used to have ROWS of different varieties of shows, movies, and music that you can look through and find some obscure or cool stuff like old school anime or the out of print movies . Some of the FYE stores were so big that I can recall one was located in the middle of a large, oval shaped mall that you could use to pass through to get to the other side of the mall. One memory I remember as a kid was one day finding a copy of the Sonic the Movie OVA there and being blown away that I may have found something that most fans at the time may not have known about since there wasn’t much advertisements for it. Nowadays while the current state of the store isn’t that bad, it’s just shell of its former self with 90% of its products being sold is just merchandise.
Seeing these cool stores that have long since shuttered makes me sad. I was too young to get to experience going to a music store to find new CDs with friends, to go buy a movie, etc… now all this has been replaced with online streaming which is convenient but soulless.
I got a lot of great memories of many of these stores. I remember applying for a job at Suncoast numerous times, but they were never hiring. I ended up at Wizards of the Coast when they still had mall stores. Funny you mentioned the Mario statue cause it reminded me that the one we had at the GameStop i worked at in 2002 got stolen. It was loaded with security tags, but the thieves lifted it over the sensors and booked it. It sucked, sure, but just the thought of a couple of dudes hoofin it through the mall with a giant mario statue had to look pretty funny. My coworkers didn't even really notice it was gone til a woman came in and said she saw some guys throw it in the back of an idling truck and speed off and wondered if it was ours. Fortunately it was my day off, so I didn't get in trouble for it😅 The statues were Nintendo's property, not ours, so it was kind of a big deal we lost it
The only one's I recall are Circuit City and Laser Quest. I never went into Circuit City, only saw them. But for Laser Quest I remember from 4th grade until high school (so like from 2005 to like early 2012 I think) I would go to Laser Quest for a lot of birthdays of buddies in school. It was around 2012 or 2013 of either 11th or 12th grade that I found out that Laser Quest would be shutting down in our local area. SO many fun memories were had there.
I went to an LQ for my youngest brother's birthday. My laser tag name was Lincoln. 'Twas before the pandemic. And the last time I did laser tag. I was bad at it.
I had a local KB toys in my town, and I remember picking out Pokemon stuff everytime I went in there! It closed and a few random stores came and gone but you could still see it along with having a Blockbuster in the same lot. ALSO SOUL PUNK MENTION
My Grandpa Ed used to take Me to The Aladdin’s Castle Arcade at Maplewood Mall When I was younger, I miss Him and My Grandma Pat so much! R.I.P.😭❤️📺🎶👍🏻
While I didn't have any of these stores, the one I remember the most that's now defunct is Hastings. It was practically a staple of Family Visits in the '00s - '10s given it was pretty much where we did a lot of shopping. I did a lot shopping there and they were really one of the only places where you could buy some more rare merch that wasn't easily available anywhere. Sadly got shut down around 2016.
What a blast to the past, I remember loving circuit city's bumpy red iconic floors as a kid, and the dark little rooms you could go in to test the fuzzy carpeted sound systems
All of them, with the exception of Strawberries and Aladdin's Castle - in fact, this video was my very first time hearing of either! The thing that struck me most with seeing that Aladdin's Castle was seeing that it was apparently operated by Bally's, that's a classic video game company
I went to Circuit city a lot. I remember buying a promotional DVD full of hip hop and R&B videos for one cent once. I was so surprised and shocked that I was able to get that (a long time before I realized they couldn't legally sell promotional DVDs in stores, so they were basically just giving it away).
I miss Aladdin's Castle so much my local mall that is dead now use to have one in the 90's I'd put put so many quarters into Mortal Kombat 2 arcade back in 94. I also miss most of the other stores you mention especially Circuit City even though I didn't go there alot I have such nostalgia for that place I can still picture the wall of TV's on the left side of the store when you walk in.
Wow! I never knew your username was referencing Laser Quest! I grew up and live in a suburb of Houston TX and we went to Laser Quest a ton as a kid for birthday parties or just to hang out. Lots of memories there for sure. Our closed down probably in the mind 2000’s, I thought they all went out of business so crazy to hear yours closed down around 2020. That was such a cool place I hadn’t thought about in awhile.
My friends and I used to run straight to the back of Suncoast to the anime section because in the late 00s/early 10s, it was basically the only place you could get that stuff without ordering online (which was still relatively new). Now every time I see the Nani!? in our local mall I think man, I would have loved a store like that back then, and I remember Suncoast fondly My only lasting memory of KB Toys was when they were going out of business. My dad took me there 3 different times to get plushies and Zoids at the clearout prices And ironically enough Noodle Kidoodle is probably both the most nostalgic and the one I remember the least. My grandfather used to take me shopping for school clothes every summer and it was really the only time I went to the mall before I turned 12-13ish. Noodle Kidoodle was there when I was in the single digits, and I loved it because they had a whole display of Safari Ltd. animal and dinosaur figures, and that was all I cared about as a kid. I got at least one every year so I had a pretty decent collection built up after a while
EB Games are pretty much the only big game stores in Australia, we've had them for as long as I can remember, their only real competition GameTraders were converted into crappy memorabilia stores a few years ago. Kmart is also one of if not the biggest retailers in Australia to this day
There was this one place I used to go to in Medina Ohio area called Amazone. I remember for my 5th or 6th birthday, my grandma set up this huge table there and I sent out invitations to each of my classmates. Nobody came due to them thinking I was weird because I had autism and I was black but one boy did show up though. I remember going there with my cousin and while he was in laser tag, I went in this MASSIVE playground and got lost lol. The place closed down not because of the pandemic but because it was so dirty. I did go in the laser tag room and got scared because it was so dark. It also had an arcade but most of the games were broken. I googled the address and it turns out that it became Jurassic Mountain. There was also a burger king with a playplace across the street that I only went into one time which also closed down.
This video made me remember the Disney Princess mystery reveal toys I used to buy from KB Toys which have, incidentally enough, been personal "lost media" for me for years. I didn't remember their name and I've been googling off and on for years. This video lead me to searching again and somehow there's been an r/tipofmytongue subreddit for 6 damn years with the damn Amazon listing in the comments and I finally found them. Its Zizzlingers. I know no one cares but its a big deal to me. A decade long search finally over and the answer was just sitting there for 6 years. 😭
I Might Have visited some of these places before they closed, Thanks for sharing these memories, but I don’t think I could ever find all these places near me, but most of them were near me .
Man that first story about Strawberries is so close to my experience as well. I had no idea it was mostly just a New England thing. I definitely remember the logo for how stylish it was too. However, the one near me was a two-story building. I remember going there once as a kid in the early 2000s because my dad loves music and was amazed at how big the building was for a music store. It also got turned into a FYE as well a few years later because I remember going to that same two-story building as a teenager when I was first getting into metal music and I wanted to buy CDs. Now funny enough it's a Men's Wearhouse. I guess they just gave up trying to make the two story music store idea work because not as many people are buying music anymore. It's funny you mentioned Newbury Comics as well because that was another store I loved as a teenager that i'd go to constantly. I love that you mentioned EB Games but I'm suprised you didn't mention GameCrazy as well another game store that was super prominent back in the 2000s. I always thought they were way better than GameStop and when all the EB Games got converted to GameStop, GameCrazy became my go-to place for buying games all the way up until they went under in 2010.
I remember a lost of these. Suncoast was one that I went into a few times but it always made me feel super uncomfortable like I was in a store for adults only and I shouldn’t be there. Me and my younger sister loved KB Toys at the mall and it’s where our parents bought our first gaming system a PS2. When I was really little my parents would bring me to the mall and I’d always beg to go to the Disney Store. They had tons of plushies and other toys. I remember against one wall there was this stairstep pyramid thing where all the steps were so covered in plushies that you usually count even see the stair step structure underneath so it just looked like a huge pile of toys up to the ceiling. I got in trouble everyone’s for trying to climb up onto it.
I don't think there's any left, but Fry's Electronics? GOD, I MISS THAT STORE. Went to the City of Industry and Burbank locations and the themes were the coolest. Apparently other locations had other themes and it was the coolest place as a kid. When my mom and her then bf were walking around, i remember looking at all the magazines and toys and movies. I vividly remember getting traumatized by the thriller music video as a wee kid at the Industry location. So many good memories there, sad to see them all wiped out.
Circuit City, Toys R Us, and Suncoast/EB, mainly. My dad used to go electronics shopping at the first in the early 90's, so we were brought along by extension. The building stands to this day, but since I don't live near it, I can't remember what it became. Toys R Us, I remember we got our copy of SimCity SNES from. It also had a really neat GameBoy Demo kiosk, which output the handheld display to a TV. That was such a cool setup, and kid me still wants to own one of those kiosks. I also remember getting a Petz Catz plushie there, too, since we are fans of the PF Magic games. Suncoast was where we picked up copies of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature and Pocket Monsters Silver. I still remember the rep asking us if we knew the game wasn't in English, and that was precisely the reason we wanted to buy it lmao That location later became an EB Games, IIRC, and I remember going there, but I don't remember if we bought anything. Now both are gone, but since, again, out of town, I'm not entirely sure where the store was in the mall, or what lives in that location now.
THAT SUPER MARIO STATUE WAS IN MY LOCAL TOYS R US FOR YEARS. it got remodeled and they got rid of it, but it was around even when amiibos came out. i remember seeing it the same day i saw the giant yarn yoshi amiibo for the first time. i could actually map out what that whole area looked like by heart and its solely because of that mario statue being the centerpiece
🎀🌸 I Loved Toys R Us & I’m So Glad It’s Making A Comeback At Macy’s❣️ I Was Also Obsessed With The KB Toys Website & Really Wanted To Go Into The Store❣️ Also Aladdin’s Castle Sounds Like A Fun Place❣️ But The One Defunct Place I Have A Huge Soft Spot For Is None Other Then Club Libby Lu❣️ It Was A Place Where Little Girls Could Get Makeovers & Be Little Girls❣️ I Had My Birthday Party There Once & I Remember The Exact Day I Had It Too❣️ Cuz I Celebrate It As My Own Personal Holiday❣️ As For What I Got There, I Got The Hannah Montana Makeover Cuz It Was Popular Back Then & It Came With A Wig❣️ 🌸🎀
Another defunct store I remember from the new england 2000s is filenes. i have so many memories of my mom dragging me there and spending hours to shop there.
they used to have a suncoast near where i live! sadly it got cloes before i was born but my mom told me how she would go there all the time with her friends! i wish it would've still been around and i would've defiantly been going to it all the time lol
One that comes to mind is the old defunct department store, Mervyn's.There was one in particular I used to visit with my mom and grandma. One time I found what I believe was a hotdog warmer that talked when you opened it. It spoke like a fast-talking enthusiastic sports commentator. My younger self thought it was the funniest thing ever. Another memory I have is shopping with my grandma and recognizing someone I went to elementary school with (but being too shy to say anything.) Mervyn's sadly went bankrupt and the location I used to go to was eventually replaced with Target. I used to sometimes pass by their long defunct headquarters building though it eventually got demolished and is being replaced with apartments. Mervyn's is apparently still around online-only but I don't care for the clothing or prices.
When you brought up Crazy Bones, that made me remember that I either still or had a few of them! I'm gonna look around and see if they're still around but crazy thing is, since it's been so long having them I don't remember how I got them. Whether I got them from Toys 'R Us or a different store I'm not sure but the 2000s was such a good time for those great old stores. There's some stores I wish were still around including some restaurants and one I always liked going to cause I'm a sucker for pancakes, is Golden Griddle. Edit: Apparently, Golden Griddle is still around, just not in my old hometown.
Circuit City! I miss it. I distinctly remember going to Suncoast to buy anime DVDs/CDs/merchandise too. I STILL have anime wall scrolls from there to this day... I miss it. 😢
My local mall had KB Toys so I visited before it closed down when I was a kid and thought it was magical. I remember going to a Circuit City once or maybe twice but I have vague memories of it but I was still a kid and very young more so than KB Toys was back then. Suncoast seemed cool and I only ever saw it once but never entered and I am certain of it around the time I traveled to New England to meet a relative. Suncoast is very distinct. But I am wondering where in New England back then did I see it around 2006, 2007, or 2008. But I DEFINITELY been to Toys R. Us countless times as a kid and my location was awesome for it has so much history for my state! Until it became Hobby Lobby and mutilated the unique entrance it originally had.
There's a Toys R Us in the American Dream mall and when I visited New Jersey a few years ago I went there and it was so surreal to step foot into a Toys R Us store again. They had new toys and toys dating all the way back to like 2007, various cool displays, like just so much things I could get my grubby little mits on and just play with and be a goofy child in a toy store
When I was a kid in the 90s, I loved Discovery Zone (DZ). It was so much fun! I wasn’t really outgoing, but I had fun on my own. My mother also worked at a Computer City for a while at that time. The business model up at corporate was horrible, and the chain went under. (edit: And how can I forget Tower Records?! My family loved that place, and it was so sad to see them go.)
Ugh, I wish my generation had stuff like shopping malls n whatnot. I mean we did get Toys R Us, but none were near me, so I never went. And video games weren't popular in my family until i became a teen and could get my own laptop games, and those would just be on steam rather than a cool store anyways. Seems a lot of the fun pop culture stores of olde now exist primarily on the internet, which sucks because A. No cool store displays and ambience and B. It makes making nerd friends much harder, as theres not really a nexus point where we all meet 😔
I used to go to KB Toys every weekend in the mall. They always had a table in front of the store, and on the table were a bunch of toys that moved, like those animals that flip over and all that. Then in the early 1990s it closed. I was there on the last day. Most of the day there were very few customers. I was around 12 years old, I guess. The prices were so low for the last day that I was able to buy tons of toys! They kept lowering prices all day long. I spent most of the day walking around the store, keeping an eye on the things I wanted, making sure no one took the last one before the next mark-down time. I was still there when the store was almost entirely cleaned out, and I took my armfuls of toys to the checkout and bought everything I wanted, and it was all so cheap I got it with my own money and had money left over. Then I went back through the store looking for what I could get with the money I had left. I got SOOOO much stuff. My mom was making mean faces when I got back to the house and she saw how many toys I'd bought. (But my mom always makes mean faces, nothing on this Earth ever makes her happy, even seeing happy kids with armfuls of toys.) I still have a lot of those toys that I bought that day. It's an incredible memory for a kid!
my fondest memories of circus city is going in with my dad and seeing a parappa 2 and rez game demos playing on tvs. i had no idea the ps2 was a thing back then so it totally blew my mind
We had an EBGames in my mall, as well as a GameStop... then, I kid you not, after GameStop bought EBGames, for several years we had TWO GAMESTOPS IN THE SAME MALL. One (the former EB) is still there in the same physical spot today. I miss Suncoast a lot. That was the only nearby place that sold anime and Japanese sodas back then (FYE sold manga, to be fair). Tons of good memories of going there to discover new anime. I also miss our mall arcade, which was called Tilt. I spent so much time there playing Dance Dance Revolution. Our former Circuit City is now a Big Lots! and their big red pillar is now just a boring gray monolith. I hear Big Lots! is closing that location soon, too. (not doxing myself here btw, all this is in a city that I have to drive quite a ways to get to. It's just the closest city with a big chain retail presence)
There was a learning store I grew up near called “Learning is Fun” and it was kind of like noodle kidoodle where its a learning store. they mostly had enrichment stuff for preschoolers, puppets, teacher supplies, goodie bag building stuff like some small party supplies. They went out of business in like 2009-10 because of the recession but i remember it vividly!
Zany Brainy was my favorite store as a kid. Ours sold Beanie Babies, Crazy Bones, and Pokemon Cards on top of all the educational toys. They also had a book club and lots of other events you could sign up for. Then it closed and they turned it into a Chuck-e-cheese which is now also closed :(
There was a nearby Circuit City where I bought Kingdom Hearts II, which is still my all-time favorite video game. When it closed, it became a Toys R Us, so I ended up experiencing heartbreak twice with the same building. Currently it's a gym, and it disgusts me every time I see it. Cue Harry Potter shouting "How dare you stand where he once stood!"
That's horrible in all honesty
It evolved from one defunct store into another defunct store. How ironic.
Huh, I also have a local gym that used to be toysrus that used to be a circuit city up until around 2011 according to google maps. I still miss that toyrus, grew up going to it a lot from the early 2010’s up until its closure. Everytime I see that gym, I stare at it in disdain.
Either it’s a crazy coincidence, or it really is a small world.
@@BrightCrystalLegend-Astal You live anywhere in Texas?
@@otaking3582 yep! I’m guessing we’re talking about the same location then! You must be talking about Firewheel mall!
I worked at a KB Toys when I was in high school in the mid 90s, and I remember telling my boss I was disappointed that they didn’t sell LEGO, lol
They didn't sell LEGO?! No wonder they went out of business.
Actually, it does make sense when you consider Lego was on the decline in the mid to late 90's and even tried making nonconstructibal sets during that time. May we all thank Bionical and Star Wars for dragging them out of that rut and into the current "Adults only" rut they're in now.
@@ArsonRaboot Absolutely true, that was during their “dark ages”, lol. Makes sense! It’s amazing how LEGO rose from those ashes ti where they are today. Like you said, Star Wars helped them hold on…
Is it because legos were too expensive for kb toys to sell?
I remember when my local mall used to be a proper mall. It had a Target, an FYE, a Justice, a GameStop, you name it, it was there.
Then one day the Target shut down, and it all went downhill from there. All the major retailers would drop like flies throughout the years, with the last major store loss being Carson's.
Now all that's left are a Spencer's and a Bath and Body Works. Honestly, it blows my mind at the fact those two stores somehow managed to survive what felt like a retail apocalypse.
It wouldn't surprise me if that corpse of a mall turns into one big Spirit Halloween someday.
What's sad is that it happened to my Mall, too. Although it was in a mostly low-income area, it thrived really well and had a lot of cool shops. But around 6 or 7 years ago, they closed the Sears, which was main store. It ended having a negative impact on the store and it started going down hill. Then they also closed the Macy's during the last year and it's starting to get worse. It is a lot more empty and less active now. The biggest stores there nowadays are TJ Maxx and Albertson's.
Speaking of Carson's (also known by it's full name, Carson Pirie Scott), I remember going to the locations here in the Chicago area back in the 2000s-2010s. All of them have since closed back in 2018, and the ones at 2 shopping malls I went to (Randhurst Mall (now Randhurst Village) and Harlem Irving Plaza) are now multiple businesses.
Eh, my mall still has an FYE
B&BW is always the last to go. I swear, they've got some kind of apocalypse-proof secret.
one singular mall took out like all of the competition here. The last proper mall recently closed down, but while it was struggling to stay afloat the best store it had was JcPennys. Everything else were random small businesses and some other non-anchor stores.
Toys R Us is super nostalgic to me [I'm glad they're making a comeback in Macy's], and my mom remembers going to Aladdin's Castle, Suncoast, and KB Toys, where she later worked at a few years before I was born. I wish Aladdin's Castle, KB Toys and Zany Brainy had stuck around, despite me never having the chance to go to any of them. On a different note, I've become interested in defunct restaurants, especially defunct animatronic restaurants, and the story of Captain Andy's River Towne is so interesting and full of lost media.
Hot Topic was legit an emo/metal themed store back in the day before anime/pop culture merch took over
we need a new hot topic, like an actual hot topic
I remember Lazer Quest being a source of childhood trauma. The location near me had an image of an alien smashing through the wall in one of the first rooms you went into, it scared me so badly that I even had nightmares about it.
God, I remember having a Lazer Quest in my hometown back in the day, and it was so popular that the kids in my elementary school used to pass around an urban legend about a killer named Bloody Joe that stalked the play area. That made my imagination run wild as a kid, and led to many nightmares involving a creature that was never given a proper description aside from the name.
A fun missing detail from this video: old Circuit City commercials would end with a jingle & a CGI animation of a giant plug flying through the air, and plugging into the ground in the front of the store, as if that red tower on the front of every store was a giant plug. Lol.
Butt plug
Circuit City, where service is state of the art!
Omg, thank you for bringing up Lazer Quest! We had a location in Arizona I grew up with that me and my dad went to multiple times. I LOVED how it was everyone against everyone and that you could choose your own code name and the atmosphere of everything was so cool. I remember going to a part of the arena that had mirrors, but didn’t know it at first; so when I saw movement, I shot at it and it reflected back to my freakin’ eyeballs, lol. We then moved to Oregon when I was 13 and the closest LQ was up in northern Washington. I contacted their Facebook page at about 20 years old and they said that they were expanding all the time and were looking into an Oregon location. Then 2020 happened. I was incredibly sad they all closed, but I find it really cool that you commemorate the place in your username - like carrying a little trophy every time you post a video.
I wouldn’t be a Nintendo collector today if it wasn’t for KB Toys that was around my block in Queens, NY! Thanks for the memories
Shout out to Movie Gallery. I used to rent a lot of N64 and GameCube games from that place. Going there on a Friday night after playing a baseball game after stopping by either a pizza place or McDonald's. While my family watched there movies with the lights off, I'm in my room playing Smash Bros Melee or Mario Strikers. It's those nights I'll never forget. I still have the one game I bought when they closed, Luigi's Mansion on GameCube. Today the building still lives on as a Worlds Finance.
Omg yes movie gallery! I rented a lot of games there too, and when our local one closed my dad took us to buy some of the games they were selling off for cheap. It's how I got pokemon diamond and animal crossing city folk.
In AZ, we had Tower Records, McFrugals, more Radio Shacks than people, Virgin megastore, Zany Brainy, Video Update/Hollywood Video/Blockbuster, KB/Toy World, and the last FYE recently turned into a funko/edgy button and patch store.
As someone who grew up in New Jersey, one of my childhood staple stores was Ricky’s Candy, Cones and Chaos. I didn’t go there often, but it was always a real treat. I even remember having my 6th birthday party there, and how surprised I was to be taken out of the party room and allowed to choose a free toy from the merch stand! The day I found out it was closing was a rough one. I’ve been to similar candy stores since then, but none have had quite the same magic as Ricky’s.
I remember Ricky’s also living in NJ!! I had 2 that I went too!
We finally have the lore of the channel name and inspiration.
Looooove that you covered this! Your comment about never decoding super stylized logos as a kid is so real. It’s funny how foreign so much seems when you are super young and don’t have much context. We remember the f.y.e at the King of Prussia Mall…they used to have events there where they’d bring musicians in to perform. Thank you for the memories!!!
My favorite defunct store that I have a lot of nostalgia for is Borders. Still have some books with Borders stickers on them.
I remember as a kid going to Circuit City, Blockbuster Video, EB Games, Suncoast, Justice (as they had Webkinz plushes there), Discovery Channel Store, and KB Toys. All of these stores no longer exist today, but one surviving last Blockbuster Video is still open in Bend, ON. I remember seeing a Sam Goody location in my local shopping mall, later it became FYE and it closed and the former location was transformed into a food court, it's now in the first level in my local shopping mall. Disney Store, as well as Suncoast, and Sam Goody still exists, but only a handful of locations that are still open elsewhere in the US. I remember seeing CompUSA and Club Libby Lu locations as well.
This video should've been titled: "Defunct stores I went to as a kid"
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Title should've been: "Defunct stores, and how they tie in to my Gamecube nostalgia", lol
As a Canadian, every GameStop in my city was known as EB Games up until pretty recently, when they all rebranded. We also still have a dedicated Toys R Us here, although they no longer sell video games unfortunately.
I’m pretty sure they rebranded every EB games in Canada into GameStop
Most shocking takeaway from this video is the mention of those weasl toys, like OMG I have not thoguht of those in YEARS but those used to be on display everywhere!!
Would love to see more videos like this about various dosages of nostalgia! You have such a great relatable and chill way of covering this kind of stuff!
I love content like this. Fascinating to check out other folks' nostalgic places. I have many of my own, that while different occupy the same place in my memory.
Back when I lived in Vegas, I remember Circuit City when I was a kid. My parents bought music cassettes and stereos there
The Strawberries at Downtown Crossing in Boston was 5 floors! The fifth floor was my favorite- all clearance cds, promos, and stuff they were supposed to send back to labels but didn't. It was the best
My favorite defunct store was called Media Play and it was so cool. I had only gone there a handful of times when I was super young before they closed down but man it was awesome in there. They had a movie theater in back and everything. I remember dropping my older brothers off there to see The Two Towers there but me not being old enough to stay but seeing the movie play on screen as I walked by and left with my mom. I actually don’t even remember much of the stuff they actually had in the store but just the feeling of being there is so nostalgic.
The 90s ecchi section, for one
Mine actually ran an anime club for a bit, and it's how I made friends I still have to this day!
We never went there often, but going to Toys R Us was always magical and I always left with atleast something.
Virgin Megastore was practically my childhood/teenhood, but I only knew the ones in other countries like France, UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, but the first Kuwait branch was really quite something during the 2000s, but I wasn’t as pop culture and media savvy back then, so I kinda missed like half-a-million miles of fun back then. I remember getting the Futurama S3 DVD boxset back in ‘06, I remember browsing around the store a lot, but my memory’s a bit faded because I only remember certain parts of the store and there were times when they rearranged the store (and would eventually downsize after a brief closure in ‘07 due to governmental censorship). I also remember having a shopping spree there for my 15th birthday back in ‘09; which was awesome. There was also this one time where they sold some comics that were not sold in any other place, which was really interesting to see, but I didn’t get to buy any.
Eventually the store would close down on March 31 2012 (just 9 years after the store originally opened). I remember visiting the store for the last time on one of its last days and the shelves were practically empty, but what really stood out to me was that some of the DVD movies they had were still sold at full price when everything else was on clearance!
Virgin Megastore would come back again to Kuwait on February 23 2020, but it wasn’t the same store as it was (no physical media, but it seemed like they sold books for a very brief period), and it opened in a different mall. Surprisingly, the store managed to survive the Lockdowns, but would only last for 4 years before closing down once again.
Ive recently gone to the Suncoast and Radio Shack that still exists in NC - the Suncoast basically looks like any FYE inside now and the Radio Shack mostly sells like RC cars on display it seemed.
I went to Sam Goody & Suncoast growing up (grew up in CA) & recall those being the few places to find Anime VHS tapes as a pretty young kid. Still remember staring at Kimba and Magic Knight Rayearth VHS tapes there and a Ryo-oki plush from Tenchi Muyo.
Pokemon came out around when I was in middle school and recall Electronics Boutique having import Pokemon Tomy figures and being so excited to see Mew figures/ stuff before the 1st movie (this was at Arden Fair Mall EB in Sacramento)
Toys R Us was like a maze walking inside and I remember taking tickets to the register for video games and then waiting at the glass shielded area after to pick them up. I have tons of memories there including watching Jungle Cubs on VHS in the back and playing Parappa the Rapper on a PSone kiosk 😂 my brother would get the Power Ranger & Sailor Moon trading cards there out of the quarter machines.
I have been to the Macys popup as well as Toys R Us in Canada last year. I believe NJ has a full Toys R Us again still i want to visit.
I went to KB Toys & that was nostalgic for me. They always had those weazel balls & electronic puppys that hopped & did back flips at the front on a white enclosed table running. Thats where I got a lot of obscure toys: mostly Kenner branded Littlest Pet Shop on clearance often. Then eventually Digimon, Pokemon, Monster Rancher figures. I got some Gundam Wing pilot figures & a McFarlane Akira Kaneda toy. X-men vs Streetfighter figure packs. Spice Girl lollipops that came with stickers. I didn't really ever get video games there because they were just always locked behind the register and hard to look at but I remember seeing the Sega Genesis model 3 in the case shortly before they went out of business. We would even go to KB Toys Express which was an outlet version.
I distinctly remember the Geoffrey's stores. They were an off-shoot of Toys R Us based on the giraffe mascot, and their main focus was video games. I'm pretty sure the display unit in there was the first time I played Psychonauts.
Man I was born in 1985 and this video took me back to my childhood and teenage years. Great job.
My personal favorite defunct stores that closed/changed when I lived near them were an EB Games that became a GameStop, a Hasting's that I think is still abandoned, and the legendary K-Mart. I still have, of all things, an Angry Birds plush from K-Mart, the yellow bird Chuck to be specific.
KB Toys I remember, they were almost going to revive it, but it was probably canceled. Circuit City I remember too. And I do remember going to Noodle Kidoodle when they had it at either Crossgates or Colonie Center Mall in Albany. I'm surprised you didn't mention the Discovery Channel store, since that's a store I miss.
Oh my god, I never expected to see capital region malls in the comments here. I'm pretty sure Noodle Kidoodle was at Crossgates though? My brain is fuzzy because I was a kid though. I just vaguely remember going there, then to... I think the Warner Bros store? That or it was the original incarnation of the Disney store. God, what a blast from the past.
In the mid-late 90's, Comp-USA was our go-to spot for family desktop computers. Circuit City seemed more like the forerunner to Best Buy, as the destination for buying new TV's.
I remember watching half of Back to the Future 3 in a Circuit City while my parents were shopping around.
I was born in May 1991. I visit many of these defunct retail stores. Sam Goody, Suncoast, Blockbuster, KBToys, Funcoland, etc were my favorites.
I remember when EB Games was renamed in Canada to GameStop in the last few years, but both brand names were very much present, especially EB Games itself.
Speaking of which, I remember going to both Blockbuster and Future Shop before they closed their doors, and the latter especially being merged or shuttered by Best Buy.
I also know that HMV also shuttered across the country, got bought out by Sunrise Records, almost all of them rebranded to that, but some rebranded to FYE as well more recently. (Heck, they even opened a section of HMV at some Toys R US, still around and open too!)
Lastly, I kinda wish I even went to Laser Quest before they shuttered, since there was a location I could've gone to...
I remember Laser Quest! I had my 14th birthday there. This was in Spokane, WA. After Laser Quest closed here, a local employee of Laser Quest (he was employed for 18 years) leased the building, kept the original castle maze in tact, and reopened as Laser Maxx :D
Its so weird to me that toy r us is apparently gone and many americans miss it alot. However I am from Canada and I still see many locations open and still selling toys. In fact, I still go there often to see some cool stuff they have.
Honestly I feel privileged considering I can still go to the place that many can't
Toys R Us still exist with it's own stores, they're in the middle east. I was pleasantly surprised to see a Toys R Us in Kuwait. The one I saw was at a very nice mall called the 360 mall, the store was stocked with name brand toys it was nice. I saw a little sign behind the register and apparently there are stores in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Baharain, and Qatar if I remember correctly.
I actually worked at Circuit City during the exact era you described, with the standing GameCube demo kiosks. i worked there for approximately 9 months before moving on to something better, and that GameCube demo disc NEVER changed! Mario Party 5, FZero GX, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, 1080 Avalanche, Pokemon Colosseum, Kirby Air Ride, Harry Potter Quiddich World Cup, Spongebob Squarepants: Battle For Bikini Bottom, NBA Live 2004, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars Rogue Squadron, P.N. 03, Mario Kart Double Dash and Sonic Heroes. I think there was also some like E3 behind the scenes video that played, and Marilyn Manson was in it for a hot second and talked about doing some music for the Resident Evil movie.
There was also an Aladdin's Arcade in my local mall but that was when I was far younger. Very first arcade I ever saw, and every stereotype you think of when you think of arcades. Dimly lit, mostly illuminated by all the screens, loud as fuck, tickets, prizes, what have you. That was my first exposure to Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, began a life long love affair. It was right across from the movie theater, which ALSO had it's own, much smaller arcade. At first we payed it no mind, but they got Super Street Fighter 2 first, so it quickly became more of a hangout. The malll had been there since I first moved to the area as a child, like late 80's, and closed up in like 96 or 97.
A different, less local mall had a Suncoast Video in it, and that's where I first found Final Fantasy 7 and 8 action figures, and it was at that point, probably the best day of my life! XD
I remember being in the very Suncoast, weighing the very difficult decision of buying a PlayStation or a Sega Saturn. The clerk was really trying to sell me on the Saturn because I guess he thought it was the more powerful system. I remember him citing X-Men vs. Street Fighter as having it's tag team functionality intact on the Saturn, while it was phased out for the PlayStation release, which FELT like a huge deal to me at the time, but also, the Saturn did NOT have Bushido Blade or Final Fantasy 7, which was an even BIGGER deal!
One of the other defunct businesses I always wished would get covered by this, or a similar channel is the Bullwinkle's restaurant. It's not 100% defunct, there are apparently 3 locations left in the world, but none of them are anywhere near me anymore. Closest one is a 6 hour drive away. but they used to be all over. It is exactly the kind of thing it sounds like. Like Chuck-E-Cheese, but with Bullwinkle characters instead. I don''t remember if the food was any good, but it had a great arcade.
Excellent video! Glad to see Noodle Kidoodle/Zany Brainy get a mention. My local Circuit City became a Tile Shop and furniture store. Never went.
im so glad im early! i never miss a video!!
The defunct stores I remember from a kid were zellers mainly. But I had 2 unique ones. There was a Pokémon store that only lasted for a year tops here and left with no notice everyone guessed Nintendo sent a ceise and disist letter. But the sign remains on the store to this day and it’s been boarded up for 20+ years. Then inside my local super market was the sketchiest store possible had all kinds of imported stuff and everything trading cards and nerdy at the time. That lasted about 5 years. It was so dark compared to the whole store and I got a bunch of yugioh cards and beyblades there
One of the last Suncoasts used to be in the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, NJ up until the mall's closing earlier this year. I lived down there for a while and it was always a treat to go and see what they had in stock - a major nostalgia bomb at every turn.
I expected this to be a call to action to document retail displays for these stores, but am happy to just be invited to partake in nostalgia .
Man, FYE just isn’t the same as it used to be, it used to have ROWS of different varieties of shows, movies, and music that you can look through and find some obscure or cool stuff like old school anime or the out of print movies . Some of the FYE stores were so big that I can recall one was located in the middle of a large, oval shaped mall that you could use to pass through to get to the other side of the mall. One memory I remember as a kid was one day finding a copy of the Sonic the Movie OVA there and being blown away that I may have found something that most fans at the time may not have known about since there wasn’t much advertisements for it. Nowadays while the current state of the store isn’t that bad, it’s just shell of its former self with 90% of its products being sold is just merchandise.
Seeing these cool stores that have long since shuttered makes me sad. I was too young to get to experience going to a music store to find new CDs with friends, to go buy a movie, etc… now all this has been replaced with online streaming which is convenient but soulless.
I got a lot of great memories of many of these stores. I remember applying for a job at Suncoast numerous times, but they were never hiring. I ended up at Wizards of the Coast when they still had mall stores. Funny you mentioned the Mario statue cause it reminded me that the one we had at the GameStop i worked at in 2002 got stolen. It was loaded with security tags, but the thieves lifted it over the sensors and booked it. It sucked, sure, but just the thought of a couple of dudes hoofin it through the mall with a giant mario statue had to look pretty funny. My coworkers didn't even really notice it was gone til a woman came in and said she saw some guys throw it in the back of an idling truck and speed off and wondered if it was ours. Fortunately it was my day off, so I didn't get in trouble for it😅 The statues were Nintendo's property, not ours, so it was kind of a big deal we lost it
The only one's I recall are Circuit City and Laser Quest. I never went into Circuit City, only saw them. But for Laser Quest I remember from 4th grade until high school (so like from 2005 to like early 2012 I think) I would go to Laser Quest for a lot of birthdays of buddies in school. It was around 2012 or 2013 of either 11th or 12th grade that I found out that Laser Quest would be shutting down in our local area. SO many fun memories were had there.
I really enjoyed this addition to your content 😊
I went to an LQ for my youngest brother's birthday. My laser tag name was Lincoln. 'Twas before the pandemic. And the last time I did laser tag. I was bad at it.
I had a local KB toys in my town, and I remember picking out Pokemon stuff everytime I went in there! It closed and a few random stores came and gone but you could still see it along with having a Blockbuster in the same lot. ALSO SOUL PUNK MENTION
My Grandpa Ed used to take Me to The Aladdin’s Castle Arcade at Maplewood Mall When I was younger, I miss Him and My Grandma Pat so much! R.I.P.😭❤️📺🎶👍🏻
Getting Lego sets at KB Toys and building it while waiting for our food at Chevy's at the same mall is a cherished childhood memory of mine
2:18 SOUL PUNK MENTION??????? DUDE A+ MUSIC TASTE 🔥🔥
While I didn't have any of these stores, the one I remember the most that's now defunct is Hastings. It was practically a staple of Family Visits in the '00s - '10s given it was pretty much where we did a lot of shopping. I did a lot shopping there and they were really one of the only places where you could buy some more rare merch that wasn't easily available anywhere. Sadly got shut down around 2016.
I think this, and food, might be my favorite lost stuff topics
I'll never forget all the times I went to Suncoast to buy anime and then we'd stop at the Orange Julius inside the mall. Good times.
What a blast to the past, I remember loving circuit city's bumpy red iconic floors as a kid, and the dark little rooms you could go in to test the fuzzy carpeted sound systems
At least laser quest isn’t totally dead as they’re still operating abroad
I got my Phineas and Ferb DVD from FYE and it still works almost 12 years later!
I remember my mom had a pretty well preserved Douglas Fir, me and my siblings loved his song and loved touching his face.
All of them, with the exception of Strawberries and Aladdin's Castle - in fact, this video was my very first time hearing of either! The thing that struck me most with seeing that Aladdin's Castle was seeing that it was apparently operated by Bally's, that's a classic video game company
I went to Circuit city a lot. I remember buying a promotional DVD full of hip hop and R&B videos for one cent once. I was so surprised and shocked that I was able to get that (a long time before I realized they couldn't legally sell promotional DVDs in stores, so they were basically just giving it away).
Physical lost media (especially the historical variety) sure has its own special charm, eh…!
3:50 Today I learned that I have 500 dollar Sonic plushies. Wtf.
I miss Aladdin's Castle so much my local mall that is dead now use to have one in the 90's I'd put put so many quarters into Mortal Kombat 2 arcade back in 94. I also miss most of the other stores you mention especially Circuit City even though I didn't go there alot I have such nostalgia for that place I can still picture the wall of TV's on the left side of the store when you walk in.
Wow! I never knew your username was referencing Laser Quest! I grew up and live in a suburb of Houston TX and we went to Laser Quest a ton as a kid for birthday parties or just to hang out. Lots of memories there for sure. Our closed down probably in the mind 2000’s, I thought they all went out of business so crazy to hear yours closed down around 2020. That was such a cool place I hadn’t thought about in awhile.
There used to be a Circuit City and a Compusa in my town and a Fye and a KB Toys in my local mall when I was a kid. They're long gone now.
I truly miss CompUSA and Circuit City. I will always have fond memories of those places from the mid 1990s - late 2000s.
I would’ve loved to go to all of those places if I could.
My friends and I used to run straight to the back of Suncoast to the anime section because in the late 00s/early 10s, it was basically the only place you could get that stuff without ordering online (which was still relatively new). Now every time I see the Nani!? in our local mall I think man, I would have loved a store like that back then, and I remember Suncoast fondly
My only lasting memory of KB Toys was when they were going out of business. My dad took me there 3 different times to get plushies and Zoids at the clearout prices
And ironically enough Noodle Kidoodle is probably both the most nostalgic and the one I remember the least. My grandfather used to take me shopping for school clothes every summer and it was really the only time I went to the mall before I turned 12-13ish. Noodle Kidoodle was there when I was in the single digits, and I loved it because they had a whole display of Safari Ltd. animal and dinosaur figures, and that was all I cared about as a kid. I got at least one every year so I had a pretty decent collection built up after a while
THAT GODFORSAKEN TREE USED TO SCARE ME SO BADLY TOO!! I remember my parents bought one and my dad pranked me with it lol
EB Games are pretty much the only big game stores in Australia, we've had them for as long as I can remember, their only real competition GameTraders were converted into crappy memorabilia stores a few years ago. Kmart is also one of if not the biggest retailers in Australia to this day
There was this one place I used to go to in Medina Ohio area called Amazone. I remember for my 5th or 6th birthday, my grandma set up this huge table there and I sent out invitations to each of my classmates. Nobody came due to them thinking I was weird because I had autism and I was black but one boy did show up though. I remember going there with my cousin and while he was in laser tag, I went in this MASSIVE playground and got lost lol. The place closed down not because of the pandemic but because it was so dirty. I did go in the laser tag room and got scared because it was so dark. It also had an arcade but most of the games were broken. I googled the address and it turns out that it became Jurassic Mountain. There was also a burger king with a playplace across the street that I only went into one time which also closed down.
Anyone who lives or lived in the DMV area remember a place called "Jeepers!"
This video made me remember the Disney Princess mystery reveal toys I used to buy from KB Toys which have, incidentally enough, been personal "lost media" for me for years. I didn't remember their name and I've been googling off and on for years. This video lead me to searching again and somehow there's been an r/tipofmytongue subreddit for 6 damn years with the damn Amazon listing in the comments and I finally found them. Its Zizzlingers. I know no one cares but its a big deal to me. A decade long search finally over and the answer was just sitting there for 6 years. 😭
He should have entitled the video "Have You Visited These Defunct Places?" Laser Quest is not a store; it is a party chain like Chuck E. Cheese's.
I Might Have visited some of these places before they closed, Thanks for sharing these memories, but I don’t think I could ever find all these places near me, but most of them were near me .
Man that first story about Strawberries is so close to my experience as well. I had no idea it was mostly just a New England thing. I definitely remember the logo for how stylish it was too. However, the one near me was a two-story building. I remember going there once as a kid in the early 2000s because my dad loves music and was amazed at how big the building was for a music store. It also got turned into a FYE as well a few years later because I remember going to that same two-story building as a teenager when I was first getting into metal music and I wanted to buy CDs. Now funny enough it's a Men's Wearhouse. I guess they just gave up trying to make the two story music store idea work because not as many people are buying music anymore. It's funny you mentioned Newbury Comics as well because that was another store I loved as a teenager that i'd go to constantly.
I love that you mentioned EB Games but I'm suprised you didn't mention GameCrazy as well another game store that was super prominent back in the 2000s. I always thought they were way better than GameStop and when all the EB Games got converted to GameStop, GameCrazy became my go-to place for buying games all the way up until they went under in 2010.
I remember a lost of these. Suncoast was one that I went into a few times but it always made me feel super uncomfortable like I was in a store for adults only and I shouldn’t be there. Me and my younger sister loved KB Toys at the mall and it’s where our parents bought our first gaming system a PS2. When I was really little my parents would bring me to the mall and I’d always beg to go to the Disney Store. They had tons of plushies and other toys. I remember against one wall there was this stairstep pyramid thing where all the steps were so covered in plushies that you usually count even see the stair step structure underneath so it just looked like a huge pile of toys up to the ceiling. I got in trouble everyone’s for trying to climb up onto it.
I don't think there's any left, but Fry's Electronics? GOD, I MISS THAT STORE. Went to the City of Industry and Burbank locations and the themes were the coolest. Apparently other locations had other themes and it was the coolest place as a kid. When my mom and her then bf were walking around, i remember looking at all the magazines and toys and movies. I vividly remember getting traumatized by the thriller music video as a wee kid at the Industry location. So many good memories there, sad to see them all wiped out.
Circuit City, Toys R Us, and Suncoast/EB, mainly. My dad used to go electronics shopping at the first in the early 90's, so we were brought along by extension. The building stands to this day, but since I don't live near it, I can't remember what it became.
Toys R Us, I remember we got our copy of SimCity SNES from. It also had a really neat GameBoy Demo kiosk, which output the handheld display to a TV. That was such a cool setup, and kid me still wants to own one of those kiosks. I also remember getting a Petz Catz plushie there, too, since we are fans of the PF Magic games.
Suncoast was where we picked up copies of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature and Pocket Monsters Silver. I still remember the rep asking us if we knew the game wasn't in English, and that was precisely the reason we wanted to buy it lmao
That location later became an EB Games, IIRC, and I remember going there, but I don't remember if we bought anything. Now both are gone, but since, again, out of town, I'm not entirely sure where the store was in the mall, or what lives in that location now.
THAT SUPER MARIO STATUE WAS IN MY LOCAL TOYS R US FOR YEARS. it got remodeled and they got rid of it, but it was around even when amiibos came out. i remember seeing it the same day i saw the giant yarn yoshi amiibo for the first time. i could actually map out what that whole area looked like by heart and its solely because of that mario statue being the centerpiece
🎀🌸 I Loved Toys R Us & I’m So Glad It’s Making A Comeback At Macy’s❣️ I Was Also Obsessed With The KB Toys Website & Really Wanted To Go Into The Store❣️ Also Aladdin’s Castle Sounds Like A Fun Place❣️ But The One Defunct Place I Have A Huge Soft Spot For Is None Other Then Club Libby Lu❣️ It Was A Place Where Little Girls Could Get Makeovers & Be Little Girls❣️ I Had My Birthday Party There Once & I Remember The Exact Day I Had It Too❣️ Cuz I Celebrate It As My Own Personal Holiday❣️ As For What I Got There, I Got The Hannah Montana Makeover Cuz It Was Popular Back Then & It Came With A Wig❣️ 🌸🎀
Another defunct store I remember from the new england 2000s is filenes. i have so many memories of my mom dragging me there and spending hours to shop there.
they used to have a suncoast near where i live! sadly it got cloes before i was born but my mom told me how she would go there all the time with her friends! i wish it would've still been around and i would've defiantly been going to it all the time lol
Actually I live near one
@@smudger4274 thats cool
One that comes to mind is the old defunct department store, Mervyn's.There was one in particular I used to visit with my mom and grandma. One time I found what I believe was a hotdog warmer that talked when you opened it. It spoke like a fast-talking enthusiastic sports commentator. My younger self thought it was the funniest thing ever. Another memory I have is shopping with my grandma and recognizing someone I went to elementary school with (but being too shy to say anything.) Mervyn's sadly went bankrupt and the location I used to go to was eventually replaced with Target. I used to sometimes pass by their long defunct headquarters building though it eventually got demolished and is being replaced with apartments. Mervyn's is apparently still around online-only but I don't care for the clothing or prices.
When you brought up Crazy Bones, that made me remember that I either still or had a few of them! I'm gonna look around and see if they're still around but crazy thing is, since it's been so long having them I don't remember how I got them. Whether I got them from Toys 'R Us or a different store I'm not sure but the 2000s was such a good time for those great old stores. There's some stores I wish were still around including some restaurants and one I always liked going to cause I'm a sucker for pancakes, is Golden Griddle. Edit: Apparently, Golden Griddle is still around, just not in my old hometown.
Circuit City! I miss it. I distinctly remember going to Suncoast to buy anime DVDs/CDs/merchandise too. I STILL have anime wall scrolls from there to this day... I miss it. 😢
My local mall had KB Toys so I visited before it closed down when I was a kid and thought it was magical. I remember going to a Circuit City once or maybe twice but I have vague memories of it but I was still a kid and very young more so than KB Toys was back then. Suncoast seemed cool and I only ever saw it once but never entered and I am certain of it around the time I traveled to New England to meet a relative. Suncoast is very distinct. But I am wondering where in New England back then did I see it around 2006, 2007, or 2008.
But I DEFINITELY been to Toys R. Us countless times as a kid and my location was awesome for it has so much history for my state! Until it became Hobby Lobby and mutilated the unique entrance it originally had.
I went to the Chautauqua Mall when I was still going places
my favorite lost media youtuber covering another massive interest of mine, defunct retail!!
I remember going to my local Toys R Us store in Scotland in 2017 as of 2023, my local Toys R Us location is now a bowling alley
There's a Toys R Us in the American Dream mall and when I visited New Jersey a few years ago I went there and it was so surreal to step foot into a Toys R Us store again. They had new toys and toys dating all the way back to like 2007, various cool displays, like just so much things I could get my grubby little mits on and just play with and be a goofy child in a toy store
When I was a kid in the 90s, I loved Discovery Zone (DZ). It was so much fun! I wasn’t really outgoing, but I had fun on my own.
My mother also worked at a Computer City for a while at that time. The business model up at corporate was horrible, and the chain went under.
(edit: And how can I forget Tower Records?! My family loved that place, and it was so sad to see them go.)
Ugh, I wish my generation had stuff like shopping malls n whatnot. I mean we did get Toys R Us, but none were near me, so I never went. And video games weren't popular in my family until i became a teen and could get my own laptop games, and those would just be on steam rather than a cool store anyways.
Seems a lot of the fun pop culture stores of olde now exist primarily on the internet, which sucks because A. No cool store displays and ambience and B. It makes making nerd friends much harder, as theres not really a nexus point where we all meet 😔
Both entertaining and depressing
Seeing Spawn toys on the shelves in the 90s was euphoric
I used to go to KB Toys every weekend in the mall. They always had a table in front of the store, and on the table were a bunch of toys that moved, like those animals that flip over and all that. Then in the early 1990s it closed. I was there on the last day. Most of the day there were very few customers. I was around 12 years old, I guess. The prices were so low for the last day that I was able to buy tons of toys! They kept lowering prices all day long. I spent most of the day walking around the store, keeping an eye on the things I wanted, making sure no one took the last one before the next mark-down time. I was still there when the store was almost entirely cleaned out, and I took my armfuls of toys to the checkout and bought everything I wanted, and it was all so cheap I got it with my own money and had money left over. Then I went back through the store looking for what I could get with the money I had left. I got SOOOO much stuff. My mom was making mean faces when I got back to the house and she saw how many toys I'd bought. (But my mom always makes mean faces, nothing on this Earth ever makes her happy, even seeing happy kids with armfuls of toys.) I still have a lot of those toys that I bought that day. It's an incredible memory for a kid!
my fondest memories of circus city is going in with my dad and seeing a parappa 2 and rez game demos playing on tvs. i had no idea the ps2 was a thing back then so it totally blew my mind
We had an EBGames in my mall, as well as a GameStop... then, I kid you not, after GameStop bought EBGames, for several years we had TWO GAMESTOPS IN THE SAME MALL. One (the former EB) is still there in the same physical spot today.
I miss Suncoast a lot. That was the only nearby place that sold anime and Japanese sodas back then (FYE sold manga, to be fair). Tons of good memories of going there to discover new anime.
I also miss our mall arcade, which was called Tilt. I spent so much time there playing Dance Dance Revolution.
Our former Circuit City is now a Big Lots! and their big red pillar is now just a boring gray monolith. I hear Big Lots! is closing that location soon, too.
(not doxing myself here btw, all this is in a city that I have to drive quite a ways to get to. It's just the closest city with a big chain retail presence)
There was a learning store I grew up near called “Learning is Fun” and it was kind of like noodle kidoodle where its a learning store. they mostly had enrichment stuff for preschoolers, puppets, teacher supplies, goodie bag building stuff like some small party supplies. They went out of business in like 2009-10 because of the recession but i remember it vividly!
Zany Brainy was my favorite store as a kid. Ours sold Beanie Babies, Crazy Bones, and Pokemon Cards on top of all the educational toys. They also had a book club and lots of other events you could sign up for. Then it closed and they turned it into a Chuck-e-cheese which is now also closed :(