i remember walkin into kb one day and they had these new things at the register, ‘garbage pail kids’.
as a kid who hated sports, it was cool to see a set of cards that were not sports related. bonus that they were gross as all hell.
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I remember it, though most of the details escape me. I do recall the lighting was pretty dim in many scenes, and the puppets/creatures felt very true to the cards.
Dude, I Have the movie! and over 1500 cards
You should price them out. Some of them are worth thousands of dollars now.
I had a bunch of Garbage Pail Kids stickers and put them all over my bedroom door. They were on there for like 30 years!
Apparently some of those are worth tons of money now. Too bad mine are all long gone.
the high end, series 1 for the first few dozen cards run 200-300$ each . ive got ~50% of the first series, and >100% of the rest
This says that some of them are worth thousands of dollars
That dude just dipped out to go make a fortune.
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Also, back when malls had stores.
My local mall is slowly converting to office space.
That’s hilarious. I wonder how long before they convert to housing.
Probably never? It’s in the downtown business district, so zoning probably doesn’t allow for that (artificial limitation, yeah, but a limitation nonetheless).
Mine has a lot of services offered, ie massages, pedicures, barbers, tattoo parlor. Selling stuff isn’t enough.
KB Toys was founded in 1922 as Kaufman Brothers, a wholesale candy store. switched to toys in 1946. peaked at 1324 locations in 1999. ceased operations in 2009.
That is a massively short time from peak to totally gone.
Yeah, it’s another example of financial shenanigans…
In April 2002, through dividend recapitalization, Bain Capital received an $85 million payment from KB Toys, which financed the payment through $66 million in bank loans. Glazer received $18 million, while $16 million was divided among other executives.
Bain Capital <- Well there’s your problem.
The world has changed a great deal since 1999, mostly because of the Internet and tech companies like Amazon.
Fun fact, I used to work for a cleaning company that, for a time, contracted to clean their corporate HQ. They still, in like 2005-ish, filed mostly everything on paper. Their datacenter room was half computer racks, half giant printers that would run nonstop printing reports. There was a giant row of empty server cages in there; a guy who worked there told me it was what used to be “toys.com”. They had sold it off. Their business would be dead in 4 years.
That seems so crazy that they were still printing everything in 2005, but it was still very much a paper driven world then. It’s weird how easily we forget what life was like.
the world has changed. toys simply aren’t competing with tablets and consoles, once kids are like 7 years old. malls kept raising their rents, and online stores of course aren’t helping.
toys simply aren’t competing with tablets and consoles
Maybe. But actual toys are still being made and bought and sold.
Toy stores were still with us, if not setting record profits, until venture capitalist assholes got to them:
The Internet giveth, and it also taketh away.
KB Toys and FAO Schwartz were the bomb.
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You don’t buy stuff there, just go in to play with stuff
Did anyone else have an Imaginarium? With educational toys and the little kid’s door.
And Marbles! Man, we shopped at the same stores lol
I am a huge Kaiju nerd and KB was the only toy store near my family when I was young that stocked all the Godzilla toys. KB was the spot.
I used to feel like this store was especially for me personally because my initials are KB. Made going there as a kid extra exciting. “I’m no Toys 'R Us kid, let’s go to KB Toys!”
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Back when they had trains and model kits, I think rockets as well.
A good mall trip as a kid was Toysrus, KB Toys, Spencer’s, Tower Records/Coconuts/Sam Goody, Imaginarium or Marbles.
Then wash it down with Rainforest Cafe or Sakura Japan.
Every KB toys I ever went to seemed like the store was in total disarray. With out of place merchandise all the floor, and one or two exacerbated teen employees trying to ring people up and pick up the store. Guess that’s why it was so fun to go as kid.
I worked at an Independent toy that was awesome, mostly highschool / college students working there, got to build window displays and didn’t sell crap toys. When I moved right after highschool I thought I liked working at a toy store let me go work at KB toys. Big mistake It’s a hell scape, and my coworkers were living sad lives commuting 1+ hours to work at KB Toys in their 30s and 40s. I was working on 9/11 we just about open when Bush closed everything down.
Lol, I can’t believe your manager was going to keep the store open on 9/11. I’m sure corporate would have been proud.
My mall had two, for some reason, at opposite ends of the mall. As an adult, I assume KB bought some other chain and both stores were doing enough volume to justify keeping both.
