Ghosts of Retail Chains Past

With Toys R Us closing all its stores, it got me thinking about all the chains that have come and gone in my time.

Back in the 80s in mid-Michigan at one point you had 3 toy store chains.  There was Toys R Us of course, but in the mall there was Kay-Bee Toys, which I think was called something else back then.  There was also Children's Palace, which I think had better prices and selection than Toys R Us, but it went out of business by the early 90s to make room for a Best Buy that will probably be out of business in a few years.

Next to Children's Palace/Best Buy used to be a department store called Best.  I don't think we went there too often.  It's the kind of store that like Montgomery Ward or soon to be Sears didn't have great prices or selection.  I probably went there the most when it was going out of business.

KMart used to be across the street from there.  They used to have 3 KMarts in the Saginaw area plus one in Midland and one in Bay City.  Now I don't think there are any.  In the 80s you had Meijer and KMart as the two big discount department store chains.  Then Target moved in and then Wal-Mart and KMart started to have trouble.

Across the way from Toys R Us is a building that first was Builder's Square, a short-lived competitor to Home Depot that inexplicably opened a second location about a block away and then both went out of business.  Then half of it was converted into Media Play, which was sort of like Best Buy only with a larger selection of books, toys, and so on.  That was a cool store but it went out of business in the 2000s.  The funniest part of their liquidation was the giant pile of Scott Stapp CDs (the lead singer of Creed) and other junk they still had by the end.  The other half of the building was turned into a Circuit City, which was a little redundant in some ways but also had more appliances and computer gear than Media Play.

Down the road a little way was a plaza that had a couple of unsuccessful big box ventures.  One was an interesting case study called Hills.  It was a discount department store that was really killed by its own success.  They opened too many locations too quickly and wound up collapsing in the span of a couple of years.  In the same plaza was Phar-Mor, which was focused more on health and beauty products but only lasted a few years before it closed and became a Big Lots.

One chain I miss is Value City department stores.  They still have furniture stores around but the department store was nice for fat guys like me because they carried larger sizes and usually there'd be something decent for cheap or on clearance.  I got my first suit from there.  It was light brown and really sharp though maybe not the right color for job interviews.

Across the street from that used to be a department store called Teppe's.  We pretty much went there once after Christmas.  They were having a big sale on toys, but it turned out their 40-50% off was the regular price at normal stores.  In the same lot used to be a Mexican chain called La Senorita that we had a business lunch at one year with this accounting place I worked for.  They had really good seafood nachos.  They still have at least one location up in Traverse City--or they did when I went there back in 2015.

In Midland there was the KMart and next to it an A&P that moved into a larger building across the street was supposed to be a mall.  The A&P became a Farmer Jack, a chain that was all over Michigan until I think they ran into some financial and legal problems.  In Saginaw there was a grocery chain called Hamady that in the 80s got into legal hot water and went out of business.

Across town by Dow High there was a discount chain called 3D back in the 80s.  Then it became "Giant Family Center" which had more groceries.  That became Michael's (not the craft store chain) and then Ashcraft's and then a half-dozen other chains.  There was another Giant/Michaels across town that eventually became a Salvation Army store.

Next to that was an independent pharmacy called Eastlawn Pharmacy in the 80s.  Of course they eventually got bought up by a chain--CVS.  Then CVS moved out and it became Video Watch, which became Hollywood Video, which became nothing.  Actually they might have just knocked out the wall for the Salvation Army store to absorb it.  There was a Radio Shack in that same plaza that of course went out of business.  At the end of that plaza was a pizza place that was run by the parents of a kid in my class.  But eventually they went out of business and at least part of it became Dairy Queen.

Besides the Eastlawn Pharmacy, down the road was Perry Drugs.  I think the CVS moved into there for a while and then it became a Dollar Tree.  For a long time there was a record store across the street that in the 90s was a used CD store.  But one thing that way that hasn't gone out of business is the bar called the Boulevard, or the Bully.  And the Comerica Bank has been there as long as I can remember.  So there's that.

Something that occurred to me is Midland and Bay City both built malls in the early 90s, which probably seemed like a good idea t the time, but now we can see that was really at the tail-end of the Golden Age for shopping malls.  I mean 20 years later the malls in all three Tri-Cities are largely empty.  They're basically all like the mall in Essexville was in the 90s.  I went there with my dad a few times and the place was a ghost town; there were probably 5 stores still open at the time.

Not in the Tri-Cities, but more in the Detroit area there were some other chains.  The first laptop I bought new came from a CompUSA store.  They had a lot of computer stuff but the Internet, Dell, Gateway, etc put them out of business eventually.  Like Hills, the Steve and Barry's franchise expanded too fast and collapsed under its own weight.  They sold college merchandise in malls, though most of it wasn't really sized for me.  And in malls you had franchises like Camelot Music and B. Dalton's/Waldenbooks that gradually collapsed thanks to Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc.  There used to be a place called Suncoast that had movie memorabilia and tapes/DVDs and stuff.  I guess with EBay and such people stopped going there. 

Of course there were also a lot of restaurants that came and went too.  Sveden House was a buffet (or smorgasbord in Scandinavian terms) place that had some good stuff.  The Saginaw location had kind of an Alpine ski lodge look to the front of it and stuff.  They opened another location in the Bay City Mall that lasted longer, though eventually became something else.

There was another buffet chain in Saginaw called Ryan's that had really good cookies--and other stuff.  We had an anniversary party for my parents there.  I think it was the 25th anniversary.  It became Fire Mountain by their 30th.  Then Teppanyaki Buffet after my dad died.

Speaking of buffets, the Ponderosa chain used to have locations in Midland, Saginaw, and Bay City.  I'm not sure if the Bay City one is there yet but the other two are gone.  They served steak and later had the "Grand Buffet" that wasn't all that grand, but it had good chicken wings and salad.

One I always find amusing was a pizza by the slice drive-thru place called Spad's in Bay City.  They had the concept of hot n ready down before Little Caesars!  And it tasted about as good.  They went out of business by like 1997 but the sign is still there!  The building itself became like a truck liner place for a while and then it eventually got torn down, but not the sign and a smaller exit sign.  Last month when I went by there, it was still there! It's pretty bizarre.

In the 80s there were still Hardee's in Midland and Saginaw.  One nice memory was in whatever their Happy Meals were they had little Pound Puppies.  When I was sick in the hospital one time my dad brought me one that was gray with brown spots just like my big Pound Puppy Spot.  I forget if I named him Spot III or Spot IV.  That went out of business by the 90s while the Saginaw location became a Kenny Rogers Roasters briefly.  That became like a cell phone store maybe and then a lingerie store.  Wonder if the lingerie still smells like chicken?  There was a Hardee's in Flint a lot longer.  They used to have fried chicken that was really good.  One time I was working in Lenox or somewhere like that on a temp assignment and decided to get some chicken from Hardee's because that town had nowhere to go out.  It was an expensive lunch when I got pulled over for speeding. lol

But my favorite restaurant chain that went out of business was Hot n Now burgers.  In the 90s they had locations in Midland, Saginaw, and Bay City.  The double olive burger was to die for; no one else has ever had one as good.  But slowly they went under all over Michigan.  The last location in Bay City caught fire last year or 2016.  Now the only one left is in Ft. Wayne or something.  If it's still there.  I might have to go there someday.

There are of course many other places that have come and gone in the last 40 years.  And still more that will be going, until there's nothing left but Wal-Mart and Amazon.