Kmart Christmas 1980

Wonderful World of Spice Girls Holiday `10

Every holiday season I search the depths of YouTube to find some new Spice Girls Christmas goodness to share with you. Here's this years offering...

Smurf The Halls

`Tis the Season to be Smurfy! With the Smurfs set to make a splash next summer on the big screen, Smurf merchandise is starting to pop up all over the place this holiday season. The little blue guys have been missing in action for quite sometime, but have slowly been making a comeback on the pop culture landscape. This Christmas season, Macy's department store has enlisted the help of Papa Smurf as their official Christmas Ambassador. I'm not sure what that exactly means, but I know it's cool because it involves smurfs! Macy's even has a Smurf Gift Card (pictured here) available for your gift giving needs this December! Speaking of shopping, we thought we'd smurf up a whole mess of Smurf goodies that you'll be able to smurf in someone's stocking this year!
Of course, the fun begins at Macy's where you can pick up this exclusive plush, the 2010 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Holiday Smurf Toy with Finger Puppets. This would make a fine addition to any home's Christmas decorations. Standing at almost 20 inches high (I'm not sure how that relates to three apples high!?!) this Christmas smurf is sure to Smurf up your holidays! Macy's also has a 2010 Thanksgiving Day Parade snowglobe which features the Smurf balloon among many others in it's dome.

Elsewhere in the mall, you'll be able to find more smurfy goodness at Spencer's Gifts. They have two sets of Smurf glasses, in regular sized 16oz. sizes and also they have a set of four shot glasses. Both really cool gifts that are kind of reminiscent of the old Smurf glasses from Hardee's many moons ago. At Spencer's you might also be able to dig up a Smurf air-freshener, which I grabbed and it really smurfed up the entire car!



At Old Navy you'll find lots of cool retro metal lunchboxes including this one featuring the likeness of a one Mrs. Smurfette. It even has a thermos inside. Well played, Old Navy...well played! They also have some Smurfette shirts for the smurfette in your life.



And scrolling through Amazon, I stumbled across these awesome Smurf Mega Blocks sets. There are a few different ones to choose from and I'm happy to say my wife approved the purchasing of the largest set to arrive at our home. We're going to build us one Smurfin' carnival!

All this smurfy goodness has made me just realize something....Smurf Happy Meal next summer! Holler!

Classic Carts

Welcome to one of the lamest posts ever! Last weekend when I was doing the post about Zayre's bathroom I was thinking of other places where remnants of long gone stores could be found. It is then that I remember there was a whole herd of old Bradlees' carts in front of an Ollie's Bargain Outlet down the road. So I swung by and snapped a picture. Bradlees was the closet department store to our house growing up, so I spent many a shopping hour in that store. I can actually remember buying records there and I can remember the day I realized that record albums were on their way out and cassette tapes were the next thing when Bradlees redid their music department. I was pretty upset to see the records go!

I don't know if this Ollie's store was a Bradlees before or not but if you've got an Ollie's near you, there's a good chance that you can find some traces of the store that used to be there. Ollie's doesn't do much to the spaces they take over. They just move their stuff in and open the door to the public. The cool thing about a store like Ollie's (or even Big Lots) is that you never know what you'll find inside.

One more thing...Bradlees had a great snack bar too. It was called The Tulip and they had good hamburgers and orange drink!

I Took a Photo of a Men's Room Door

Seriously, this is the exact reason why I wanted to get a camera phone. Yesterday I was shopping at the crap-o-rama known as Big Lots and had to take my son to the rest room. Imagine my surprise when I was searching for the bathrooms and see the logo for my favorite old department store, Zayre, starring back at me. Of course I grabbed my cell phone and snapped a picture for the ol' blog. You might remember I did a post about Zayre a couple of months ago. Apparently Big Lots store #1016 used to be a Zayre. Of course this made me very excited but I couldn't find any other remnants of Zayre in the store. So we purchased our box of Spider-Man 3 cereal (with almost 3 months left before the expiration date) and we headed out of Big Lots. But we walked away with a little bit of the spirit of Zayre!

My Salute to Zayre

There used to be a time, not too long ago, when there were other department stores besides Target and Wal-Mart. It's true! Honest! One of my favorite department stores that my mom would take us to was Zayre. There was a Zayre in Laurel, MD about 30 minutes from our house. It was always an occasion to go to Zayre because they were my favorite store for three reasons:

1. Their Snack Bar In the back of the store, near the layaway counter was a little coffee counter where they served the best hamburgers I had ever had. They were the cheap brand of frozen hamburger patties, but they were cooked on the grill oh-so-right and I couldn't get enough of them. My mom would give me two dollars and that would get me a burger and a medium fruit punch and I savored every last bite!

2. They Sold Atari 2600 Cartridges Long After Everyone Else Stopped The rest of the retail world had moved on to Nintendo, but Zayre had a big selection of 2600 games all the way up to the end of the `80's. They also had a weird selection of games like Eggomania and Word Zapper. Plus their prices were insane. Before Zayre went out of business, I got a Hide and Go Seek game for twenty-five cents! You can't beat that! Twenty-five cents is also were I caved in and bought E.T. some seven or eight years after it came out. Horrible Game!

3. Everything Was Orange Orange is my favorite color, but it's also a tacky color for interior decorating. I read that the company changed their color to Red early on in the game, but the Laurel store was bright orange until the day they closed their doors for the last time. The walls were orange, the carts were orange. Eating in the Snack Bar was like eating in a big orange box! There was orange everywhere. Even at a young age I knew it was all tacky!

While a successful company, Zayre also opened up the TJ Maxx chain of discount stores. In 1984, they founded BJ's Wholesale Club. The Zayre chain of stores was sold to Ames, who eventually converted all the Zayre stores to Ames before going out of business themselves in 2002. The Zayre in Laurel, last time I was there was an Old Country Buffet (and yes, I did eat there!)

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