I've always had an interest in the slowly changing landscape of my hometown and the surrounding area. I'm interested in the arrivals of new stores and the deaths of old stores. Last time I blogged about places I once shopped at but now no longer exist, I mentioned New England Video, Blockbuster, and Ames. Here are three more places from my past that are forever relegated to the world of my memory.
Shop n' Save
Back in the nineties, we had two big grocery stores to choose from: Shop n' Save and Grand Union. Since Shop n' Save shared a building with the almighty Ames, my family would frequently visit both stores in the same day to get all of our shopping done in just one trip. We had no loyalty to Shop n' Save, though, and visited Grand Union frequently too.
I remember walking into Shop n' Save. For all intents and purposes, it was your average grocery store - the automatic doors led past a corkboard with ads and bulletins posted on it, then you grabbed your shopping cart and made your way through the produce section before wandering through the aisles. Now, for whatever reason, I strongly associate Shop n' Save with high ceilings and the color silver. Whether other stores featured just as much silver or had ceilings just as high is irrelevant to my wild childhood imagination. That's the weird thing about memories.
Shop n' Save's death was a sudden one. After the falling of Ames, Shop n' Save plugged along on its own for a while. Then, when word spread that Shaw's Supermarkets was going to move into Ames' old space, I wondered what would become of Shop n' Save. Surely two grocery stores sharing the same building was an idea doomed to fail. Apparently Shop n' Save wasn't willing to compete, because they vanished at the exact same time Shaw's showed up.
Circuit City
This is a unique one - there was never a Circuit City in my hometown. You see, even after my family discovered how easy it was to buy things over the Internet, I still liked to occasionally shop in brick-and-mortar stores. My mom hates shopping, as does my brother, but I don't mind it much at all, despite my aversion of large crowds. Shopping in a physical building provides a unique feeling, and you get a different experience with different stores. They're also good for when I don't know what I want to buy - just browsing the shelves can turn up things I didn't know existed, whereas when I'm shopping online I usually have a single specific thing in mind, or at least a particular brand (Like, I may want "a Godzilla toy" but have no further specifics).
Anyway, since I still liked to shop in real stores, and especially in the first half of the 2000s, before my mom was totally comfortable with buying online, occasionally we'd go on a road trip to more populated areas with big stores. In the early and mid-2000s, we liked to shop at Wal-Mart in New Hampshire. A little later we started going to Williston, which boasted a Toys R Us and a Circuit City, among other things.
I realize I've been talking a lot and not really mentioning Circuit City, but that's because I don't have too much to say about Circuit City itself. I got a lot of GameCube games there, and the last time I went there I got some on deep discount when the system was on its way out, although due to the distance we missed the big liquidation sales. I don't miss it much, since on our next road trip, which I think happened before they went out of business, was to the nearby GameStop. I'd completely overlooked the place and I like it a lot for buying video games, especially used ones.
Dollar Depot
Next to Ames and New England Video, this is one of the stores I have the most fond memories of. Dollar Depot, which I always knew of as just "the dollar store", had a green dollar bill for a logo. True to its name, everything inside cost a buck. I remember visiting it many a time, impressed by the variety of things I could get for only one dollar. Generally, whenever I visited, I'd head straight to the back of the store, which was where the toys were. After poring over the shelves, I generally would move on to the right-hand side of the store. This was where the art supplies and books were, and I would frequently get something here as well. My most common purchases were plastic animal toys and notebooks to doodle on. I still have a couple old, worn, and doodle-filled notebooks from the Dollar Depot, as well as many of the toys I bought there.
The most memorable Dollar Depot acquisition for me is when they suddenly acquired a horde of Pokemon figurines. These 2-inch toys seemed like genuine official products (they may not have been, but they seemed equal in quality) and they were even imported from Japan (I recall the packaging being loaded with Japanese characters and very little English). My brother and I flipped out at this tremendous bargain (Ames charged a good bit more for Pokemon toys than a buck) and gathered up a bunch before they all sold out within a couple weeks.
The reason Dollar Depot went under is simple - in 2006, Dollar Tree took up residence in our town by moving in where Shop n' Save used to be. Dollar Depot was only a few miles away, and it couldn't compete with Dollar Tree's larger selection. Dollar Depot attempted to branch out by adding items that cost more than a dollar, but it didn't last long. In less than a year, Dollar Depot was wiped out. I love Dollar Tree, and Dollar Depot had been declining in terms of stuff I liked, but I still collected plenty of fond memories of the place.
Showing posts with label Shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shopping. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
The Chocolate Trap
Like the majority of the world, I think chocolate is delicious. It's the classic candy type, a great treat to unwind with. Chocolate bars were what I always wanted the most when trick-or-treating as a kid, and putting a bar of solid milk chocolate in my Christmas stocking is the easiest gift my mom can give. With Valentine's Day right around the corner and Easter next up on the list of major holidays, it's a good time to warn you about the presence of fake chocolate.
Yes, fake chocolate. It looks like chocolate, is packaged like chocolate, and is marketed alongside chocolate, but it is not chocolate. Whereas chocolate tastes delicious, fake chocolate tastes sort of like what chocolate would taste like if you replaced the deliciousness with revulsion. Perhaps you've fallen prey to fake chocolate. In fact I'd say it's extremely likely. Fake chocolate is cheaper than real chocolate, so bargain shoppers like me have fallen prey to it, thinking they were getting a deal.
So how can you tell if you're looking at real chocolate or fake chocolate? It's simple. Truth-in-advertising laws mean that a marketer of fake chocolate cannot call their product "chocolate" without a caveat. Look very carefully at the package. There are two ways these companies try to sneak around the rule.
The most common way is to call the candy "chocolate flavored". Most often, you'll see "CHOCOLATE" in massive letters and "flavored" shrunk down and sort of hidden. If you see this, immediately put the package back and walk away. It is unclean to you.
The second method, which is even sneakier, is using the adjective "chocolatey". Real chocolate doesn't call itself "chocolatey". It's a term used exclusively by non-chocolate wishing it was chocolate and hoping that you would kindly ignore that little letter y at the end. Do not fall for it! It's not tasty!
Here are a few examples of candy I see in various stores, and whether they pass the test.
* You have to be careful with Palmer. Despite being a fairly reputable company, Palmer deals heavily in the seedy black market of "chocolate flavored", and a lot of their cheaper stuff is fake chocolate. Stay away from the Christmas-themed North Pole Pals, which are labeled as "milky chocolatey candy". Generally, the hollow stuff is fine. If you're like me and also dislike Double Crisp, check carefully for that, too, because Palmer keeps making accursed Double Crisp rabbits despite there always being a bunch of them left over for the clearance bin when Easter ends.
* Hershey, Nestle, Reeses, and most of the other big names in the world of chocolate are safe. You'll always find real chocolate in the familiar brown-wrapper Hershey bar. Same goes for the Symphony bar, Kisses, Reeses' Cups, 3 Musketeers, and so on.
* Around Easter, you're likely to see those giant rabbit-shaped bars proudly advertised as being half a pound. They are fake chocolate and taste terrible. They have also invaded the holiday season as half-pound Santas. Do not buy them!
* At the Dollar Tree I've found a company called Landmark Confections that makes budget-priced chocolate bars bigger than the standard sizes at a buck each. While the chocolate is certainly not the highest quality, it is real chocolate and can fulfill a chocolate fix on the cheap.
* Other non-candy stuff labeled as "chocolate flavored" is generally perfectly tasty, even if it doesn't taste exactly like chocolate. Chocolate milk, chocolate cereals, and chocolate ice cream are all fine and are not the target of my hatred.
Yes, fake chocolate. It looks like chocolate, is packaged like chocolate, and is marketed alongside chocolate, but it is not chocolate. Whereas chocolate tastes delicious, fake chocolate tastes sort of like what chocolate would taste like if you replaced the deliciousness with revulsion. Perhaps you've fallen prey to fake chocolate. In fact I'd say it's extremely likely. Fake chocolate is cheaper than real chocolate, so bargain shoppers like me have fallen prey to it, thinking they were getting a deal.
So how can you tell if you're looking at real chocolate or fake chocolate? It's simple. Truth-in-advertising laws mean that a marketer of fake chocolate cannot call their product "chocolate" without a caveat. Look very carefully at the package. There are two ways these companies try to sneak around the rule.
The most common way is to call the candy "chocolate flavored". Most often, you'll see "CHOCOLATE" in massive letters and "flavored" shrunk down and sort of hidden. If you see this, immediately put the package back and walk away. It is unclean to you.
The second method, which is even sneakier, is using the adjective "chocolatey". Real chocolate doesn't call itself "chocolatey". It's a term used exclusively by non-chocolate wishing it was chocolate and hoping that you would kindly ignore that little letter y at the end. Do not fall for it! It's not tasty!
Here are a few examples of candy I see in various stores, and whether they pass the test.
* You have to be careful with Palmer. Despite being a fairly reputable company, Palmer deals heavily in the seedy black market of "chocolate flavored", and a lot of their cheaper stuff is fake chocolate. Stay away from the Christmas-themed North Pole Pals, which are labeled as "milky chocolatey candy". Generally, the hollow stuff is fine. If you're like me and also dislike Double Crisp, check carefully for that, too, because Palmer keeps making accursed Double Crisp rabbits despite there always being a bunch of them left over for the clearance bin when Easter ends.
* Hershey, Nestle, Reeses, and most of the other big names in the world of chocolate are safe. You'll always find real chocolate in the familiar brown-wrapper Hershey bar. Same goes for the Symphony bar, Kisses, Reeses' Cups, 3 Musketeers, and so on.
* Around Easter, you're likely to see those giant rabbit-shaped bars proudly advertised as being half a pound. They are fake chocolate and taste terrible. They have also invaded the holiday season as half-pound Santas. Do not buy them!
* At the Dollar Tree I've found a company called Landmark Confections that makes budget-priced chocolate bars bigger than the standard sizes at a buck each. While the chocolate is certainly not the highest quality, it is real chocolate and can fulfill a chocolate fix on the cheap.
* Other non-candy stuff labeled as "chocolate flavored" is generally perfectly tasty, even if it doesn't taste exactly like chocolate. Chocolate milk, chocolate cereals, and chocolate ice cream are all fine and are not the target of my hatred.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Stores I Can Never Visit Again
I'm only 22 years old, but that's still old enough to have visited places that no longer exist. As I've grown up, my home town and the surrounding towns have changed. There are a number of places I visited as a child - some very frequently - that closed their doors later, and I genuinely miss some of them.
New England Video
This was a local video rental store that was a very popular destination for me and my brother from the mid-90s up until the early 2000s. While I enjoyed renting the occasional VHS tape from the kid's section (most frequently a Disney film or Garfield cartoon), the main reason for me to visit New England Video was the extensive collection of video games for the Sega Genesis system. I grew up with the Genesis, and it was a big part of my childhood. There are a number of games for it that I closely associate with New England Video because I rented them so frequently. Later, around 1999, my family got a Nintendo 64, and we rented games for that very frequently as well.
In the mid-2000s, New England Video began to falter from my perspective. They started selling off their collections of Genesis and N64 games, and my brother and I took advantage to pick up some of our old favorites. However, their selection of games for the next set of video game systems was lacking. It was a stark contrast to the all-star lineup of awesome games they had for older systems, and it was worrying. Another problem was that I wasn't and have never been a huge movie buff, so their VHS collection and their new DVDs weren't attracting me either. Without game rentals, I cared little for the store, and we stopped visiting around 2005. New England Video technically still exists (although they've moved twice, once when I was still visiting and once after), but I haven't been inside in years and it's not the store I grew up with anymore. I have, however, passed by it frequently, and it has one of those signs out front with the interchangeable letters that talks about movies you "won't find at RedBox". Exclusivity or not, RedBox and NetFlix are killing the video rental store, and I can't imagine New England Video hanging on much longer.
BlockBuster
Another video rental store. Blockbuster was late to the game, showing up around 2006, just in time for the launch of the latest wave of video game systems (The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii). Like New England Video, game rentals were what I cared about. I rented from Blockbuster a few times and discovered some good games, but I never got into it as much as I had New England Video. Within a couple years, the Blockbuster franchise was sold and renamed the incredibly silly "Moose Mountain", which sounds more like a mini-golf course or a hunting supply store than it does a video rental shop. Predictably, Moose Mountain folded in under a year.
Ames
This is the big one. This is the greatest shopping tragedy of my childhood. I loved Ames. Loved it like you wouldn't believe. It was the only full-fledged department store in town, and it was the de facto destination whenever my family needed something. Clothes? Go to Ames. Toys? Stop by Ames. Holiday decorations? Ames again. They had just about everything. This was the place my family bought a lot of things that were near and dear to me. I remember the time my brother and I came here with our savings and bought the Nintendo 64. I remember walking through the holiday aisles around Christmas time, seeing the displays of those little Christmas town figurines. I remember reading a Pokemon comic book while relaxing on a chair in the furniture section. And speaking of Pokemon, I remember buying pack after pack of Pokemon trading cards, eagerly collecting as many as I could.
In my mind, there was always going to be an Ames. It was a constant presence. Tons of people shopped there. It was the biggest fish the the small pond that was my hometown. And it was a chain - there were Ames stores all over the place, in other states, across the country! Truly, it was too big to fail.
It was in 2002 when the news spread. Ames was going out of business. Not scaling back to just the profitable stores (ours had to be profitable, there's no doubt in my mind). Going away forever. I was distraught. Ames was the best place in town for so many things! How could it vanish? Where would we go? There wasn't anywhere else in town that sold video games, and the selections of other merchandise left much to be desired. As it turned out, our town would never see another department store. Fortunately, my family eventually discovered the wonders of buying things online, and we've had little difficulty finding things to buy since.
The liquidation sale was a fun last hurrah. I was able to get a bunch of stuff for cheap. At the time, I was a big Spongebob Squarepants fan, so I got a bunch of Spongebob toys. I also remember getting a Halloween CD and Pac-Man for the Sega Game Gear. A year or two after Ames' demise, the space was filled by a grocery store (Shaw's). I still miss Ames even now, and if I had the chance to go back in time and visit any store again, this is definitely the one I'd pick.
Funny thing. I hadn't realized this until now, but this year is the tenth anniversary of Ames' demise. On August 14, it will have been 10 years since the announcement that every remaining Ames would close. Isn't that something else?
Here's a commercial Ames played to advertise their going-out-of-business sales. I only wish I'd had more money to take even better advantage of the liquidation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yr8fhtM4lk
And here's what Wikipedia has to say about Ames:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Department_Stores_Inc.
New England Video
This was a local video rental store that was a very popular destination for me and my brother from the mid-90s up until the early 2000s. While I enjoyed renting the occasional VHS tape from the kid's section (most frequently a Disney film or Garfield cartoon), the main reason for me to visit New England Video was the extensive collection of video games for the Sega Genesis system. I grew up with the Genesis, and it was a big part of my childhood. There are a number of games for it that I closely associate with New England Video because I rented them so frequently. Later, around 1999, my family got a Nintendo 64, and we rented games for that very frequently as well.
In the mid-2000s, New England Video began to falter from my perspective. They started selling off their collections of Genesis and N64 games, and my brother and I took advantage to pick up some of our old favorites. However, their selection of games for the next set of video game systems was lacking. It was a stark contrast to the all-star lineup of awesome games they had for older systems, and it was worrying. Another problem was that I wasn't and have never been a huge movie buff, so their VHS collection and their new DVDs weren't attracting me either. Without game rentals, I cared little for the store, and we stopped visiting around 2005. New England Video technically still exists (although they've moved twice, once when I was still visiting and once after), but I haven't been inside in years and it's not the store I grew up with anymore. I have, however, passed by it frequently, and it has one of those signs out front with the interchangeable letters that talks about movies you "won't find at RedBox". Exclusivity or not, RedBox and NetFlix are killing the video rental store, and I can't imagine New England Video hanging on much longer.
BlockBuster
Another video rental store. Blockbuster was late to the game, showing up around 2006, just in time for the launch of the latest wave of video game systems (The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii). Like New England Video, game rentals were what I cared about. I rented from Blockbuster a few times and discovered some good games, but I never got into it as much as I had New England Video. Within a couple years, the Blockbuster franchise was sold and renamed the incredibly silly "Moose Mountain", which sounds more like a mini-golf course or a hunting supply store than it does a video rental shop. Predictably, Moose Mountain folded in under a year.
Ames
This is the big one. This is the greatest shopping tragedy of my childhood. I loved Ames. Loved it like you wouldn't believe. It was the only full-fledged department store in town, and it was the de facto destination whenever my family needed something. Clothes? Go to Ames. Toys? Stop by Ames. Holiday decorations? Ames again. They had just about everything. This was the place my family bought a lot of things that were near and dear to me. I remember the time my brother and I came here with our savings and bought the Nintendo 64. I remember walking through the holiday aisles around Christmas time, seeing the displays of those little Christmas town figurines. I remember reading a Pokemon comic book while relaxing on a chair in the furniture section. And speaking of Pokemon, I remember buying pack after pack of Pokemon trading cards, eagerly collecting as many as I could.
In my mind, there was always going to be an Ames. It was a constant presence. Tons of people shopped there. It was the biggest fish the the small pond that was my hometown. And it was a chain - there were Ames stores all over the place, in other states, across the country! Truly, it was too big to fail.
It was in 2002 when the news spread. Ames was going out of business. Not scaling back to just the profitable stores (ours had to be profitable, there's no doubt in my mind). Going away forever. I was distraught. Ames was the best place in town for so many things! How could it vanish? Where would we go? There wasn't anywhere else in town that sold video games, and the selections of other merchandise left much to be desired. As it turned out, our town would never see another department store. Fortunately, my family eventually discovered the wonders of buying things online, and we've had little difficulty finding things to buy since.
The liquidation sale was a fun last hurrah. I was able to get a bunch of stuff for cheap. At the time, I was a big Spongebob Squarepants fan, so I got a bunch of Spongebob toys. I also remember getting a Halloween CD and Pac-Man for the Sega Game Gear. A year or two after Ames' demise, the space was filled by a grocery store (Shaw's). I still miss Ames even now, and if I had the chance to go back in time and visit any store again, this is definitely the one I'd pick.
Funny thing. I hadn't realized this until now, but this year is the tenth anniversary of Ames' demise. On August 14, it will have been 10 years since the announcement that every remaining Ames would close. Isn't that something else?
Here's a commercial Ames played to advertise their going-out-of-business sales. I only wish I'd had more money to take even better advantage of the liquidation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yr8fhtM4lk
And here's what Wikipedia has to say about Ames:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Department_Stores_Inc.
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