Kmart (and other stores) back in the day

[jon daly]

All this retail talk here reminded me about a dead blog I came across a year ago: http://pleasantfamilyshopping.blogspot.com/

The creator called it "A NOSTALGIC LOOK BACK AT CHAIN STORES AND OTHER EVERYDAY PLACES FROM THE PAST"

I have no affiliation with this blog, but I dig pics like the one below. There's plenty of others there, too.

[txstateends]

I've seen their FB page.  They find some real gems, between library archives, site visitors, old company annual reports, old magazines, etc.

[abefroman329]

Oh man, if you want Kmart nostalgia, feast your eyes and ears on this:

https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers

They're great to listen to at work. Dusty Lenscap!

[jon daly]

I'm more about the signs, but my wife just called that music "pretty."

[abefroman329]

Coming this fall to CBS: Major Dad and The Famous Teddy Z!

[jp the roadgeek]

Here's another good dead blog all about Caldor's.
http://thecaldorrainbow.blogspot.com/?m=1

[jon daly]

Way cool, jp! I never saw that blog before, but there's a lot of pics from my neck of the woods.

[jeffandnicole]

We had Caldors, Bradlees & Kmart all within about a mile of each other on the same road (yet in 3 different towns).  All did well.  When Caldors and Bradlees closed a lot of locals blamed it on competition in the area, either ignorant of the fact of, or just completely clueless, that the entire chain went out of business and had nothing to do with the local individual stores.

My preference was Caldors, then Bradlees.  Kmart managed to live long past those 2 stores, somehow.

[bandit957]

Anyone else remember how Kmart's photo processing department would invariably lose or ruin your photos? Anyone remember how they gave customers a sheet of paper blaming them for every conceivable thing that might have gone wrong with their photos?

[roadman65]

I remember the old Kmart logo like it was yesterday. In fact it was in 95 they changed it to what it is now.

[Big John]

^^ It was first changed in 1990:

[roadman65]

^^ It was first changed in 1990:

It took a long time as the one on OBT and Sand Lake still had the old log when I moved to FL in 1990.  It did not change until the mid 90's.  In fact the first time I saw a new Kmart logo was traveling on Bus. I-94 in Port Huron, MI in 1996.  It was bannered Big Kmart, as an attempt to compete with the brand name of Super Walmart (when Walmart first introduced a full grocery store within its store and many began opening 24/7) at the time. Though Kmart never went past a partial grocery store and never opened later than 9 PM (maybe later in some markets, but in FL the norm for stores is 9 PM) so it was never quite like Supercenters of Walmart.

Heck IHOP still has not changed all their signs yet for the new smile logo instead of the previous frown yet and that has been made official by IHOP well over 3 years ago.

[briantroutman]

Is that a Plymouth Cricket (née Hillman Avenger) on the left?

[jon daly]

I'm not sure, but I found your doppleganger when I was researching the Exxon logo, Brian. I thought the name sounded familiar.

http://briantroutman.com/

[thenetwork]

Anyone else remember how Kmart's photo processing department would invariably lose or ruin your photos? Anyone remember how they gave customers a sheet of paper blaming them for every conceivable thing that might have gone wrong with their photos?

When we got pictures from Kmart, I remember that for any mis-shot/blurry/etc,... photos, they would put a 1/2-inch piece of (what seemed to be) black electricians tape, to indicate that it was (I would assume) a no-charge print -- which was part of their famous "Goof-Proof, Picture-Perfect Policy" campaign.

[abefroman329]

My parents were too cheap even to have their film developed at Kmart. We used to mail it off somewhere to have it processed and they would mail it back in a few weeks.

[roadman65]

I remember the slogan, Kmart is your favorite photo place.

[jon daly]

That Caldor blog is eye candy for me. I worked in a Caldor in Vernon, Conn. when I was young, so I know a ton of the retail locations the blogger posted about. I'm almost all the way to the beginning of that blog, but I need to get some sleep,

[jon daly]

Thanks to bandit957 and abefroman329, I'm now obsessed with Dusty Lenscap. I found a link to a radio ad featuring him during a newscast on WLW from 8/1/88.

I had no idea that he was a character that looked at sounded like a hardboiled PI. I thought that abe was in tears and blamed the dust for his eyes. This is what I get for assuming that Dusty was an adjective and not a proper noun.

http://onlinelunchpail.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-snuffleupagus-moment-with-dusty.html