Business Disney Store Dead at 34 - OH THE HUMANCHILDITY

Disney Store Dead at 34
Alexi Rosenfeld

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one day we will all return to the mysterious realm from which our consciousness was born. Once our time on this mortal coil has ended, all that’s left will be the memories held by those who loved us. Those people too will disappear, and we can only hope that they will have spoken our name enough that it never fully vanishes from the minds of the living. That, or we remain as stores-within-stores at specific Target locations.

In March, Disney announced that it would be closing its standalone Disney Store locations, deciding to focus on e-commerce instead. This week, nearly all of the remaining Disney Stores, long a safe haven for bored children forced to accompany their mothers to the mall, will close up shop.

The Disney Store, only 34 years old at the time of its passing, will be remembered as a loving presence in the lives of millions of young children who did not yet understand what “merchandise tie-ins” were. A magical place where you could get Auntie Anne’s cinnamon sugar dust all over a real-life Woody doll that your dad wouldn’t buy you, the Disney Store was where the movies became real.

Legends never die, and that is true for the Disney Store. Its memory will be preserved in Targets around the country, with more than 160 locations of “The Disney Store at Target” set to open before the holiday season. Adults who knew the Disney Store in its prime will be able to take their own children to these memorial sites and say, “This used to be a full store in the mall,” while their kids ignore them to make Elsa and Olaf kiss.

The Disney Store is survived by The Walt Disney Company, Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and the youngest member of the family, Disney+. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that you stream the television show Hawkeye when it premieres later this year.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Spencers. There is a symbiotic relationship between malls and Spencers. If the stoner sex toy gag shop still stands, so does the mall. And you will never find Spencers outside a mall. They exist to feed each other thirteen year-old souls.

I'm aware of a mall not far from me that still has a Spencers, it's one of those things that you can't believe is still around.

Actually even in the 90s the writing was on the wall. The 90s saw the death of most of the good mall shops that catered to anyone other than teens, women, and desperate gift seekers. No good hobby shops, book shops, etc. All gone. Even in the 90s, I can't remember the last time I saw something truly "different" in a mall that wasn't Fashionable Clothing, Jewelry, Pop Culture Media, or Generic Gifts, like the obligatory candle shop and the pan-asian "import store" and the like.

Outdoor type shops with camping supplies and hunting supplies? Nope. I don't think many of these survived the 80s, and none survived much into the 90s.
Book stores? Walden Books and B. Dalton both started to die in the 90s when they got merged with Borders, and you almost never saw indie bookstores after that point, either.
Most of the more niche electronic gaming shops died - FuncoLand for consoles and Software Etc / Babbages for computers.
Radio Shack was dying it's slow death, and it's mall outlets sucked more than their strip mall and stand alone ones - the mall outlets were more consumer-oriented, less hobbies' stuff.
KB Toys and Circus World were in their death throws at the time, too. Circus World might have already died by the 90s, I'm not sure.

On down the list.

On top of that, a lot of the traditional end-cap stores started to struggle, too. Sears was the huge one... Every mall had a Sears. Then.. they didn't. J.C. Penny was another big name end-cap store that started to have problems.

That impact was very delayed for me, only recently has the JC Penney and Sears died at my local mall, through the 1990s and into the 2000s it was still very healthy, however I did notice less niche stuff once we got to the 2000s and by the end of the 2000s when the Waldenbooks (which I've always sorely missed) and the KB Toys closed it had started to decline.

God do I miss Borders.
And no the Australian one doesn't count. I will kick your ass.

I only to visit a Borders once right before they closed in 2011, I was very impressed, it's too bad they didn't last longer.

If only people acted this way when Sharper Image died (yes, it' wasn't an amazing store, but I had tons of fun as a kid seeing the crazy gadgets/toys in there), that Sun Coast movie store (might've been West-Coast only tbh), those "Excalibur" stores that sold suits of Medieval armor and display weapons. There were some gimmicky (but fun) stores back in the day...

Food courts/attached restaurants are still good. Cell phone stores all next to each other, so you can haggle for the best price. When Bose had stores, it was a place I could go to get a free replacement if my headset broke under warranty (happened more often than I'd like to admit). Nicer malls have a pet shop/humane society outpost which are fun to walk through (who doesn't like puppies/kittens frolicking in display windows?). If it's an outdoor mall, they sometimes have Koi ponds, which are fun (I like fishies, sue me). But otherwise? That's about it.

One of the coolest stores I ever set foot in was called Media Play, it was owned by the same company as Suncoast and was like a Suncoast on steroids, imagine a Suncoast the size of a Best Buy, tons of games, movies and most importantly for me, anime dvds and merch as well as being crossed with a book store, they even sold musical instruments.

These videos give you an idea what they were like, sadly they all closed at the start of 2006.

Anyone else remember the '90s Di$ney stores in malls? Teal and pink, film reel-like decoration, big screen in the back with Di$ney animation? Then it was that sparkly blue floor thing with the more modern look.

(not much of a fan of Di$ney, but there's the nostalgia there)


I miss bookstores in general.

Part of real life being "cancelled" by tech oversaturation is the end of bookstores.

I still have a bookstore in my town but it's barely a bookstore, it mostly sells pop culture junk, Funk pops, even blu rays, with precious little room for actual books.

Someone needs to go back in time and kill Walt Disney when he was a kid.

I'm willing to miss out on the cartoons and my avatar, if only to save society as we know it.

Or tell him to lay off the cigarettes so he could run the company for longer and maybe prevent it from going to shit.

So the disney store ISN'T ACTUALLY closing. they're fucking changing it to an online service like fucking everything else is now. More barren retail space and funds for scalpers wallets. If anyone else here knows about disney stores, some of the exclusive shit gets scalped online. This is pretty much all store exclusive shit for any store right now due to corona, distribution bullshit, and corona. So by goign solely exclusive online they no longer have to pay workers to run physical stores, and there's just gonna be people buying up the stock of high demand shit via bots instantly like every other online retailer. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact disney now owns the right sto half the fucking entertainment industry. Once again, fuck disney.

EDIT: I just realized they're apperently moving "disney store" stuff to "target exclusive". ha.... HA HA HA HA HA!
Seriously, look up anything related to target or walmart eclusive products lately, it's a fucking goldmine of pissed off customers talking about managers flipping stock on ebay.

EDITX2 BECAUSE I DIDN"T NOTICE THIS POST AT FIRST AND DON'T WANT TO DOUBLE POST:


It really depends on the area and the kind of stores in the mall. If it's just nothing but expensive clothing stores as some have become then yeah absolutely dogshit zombie mall. The malls in my area tend to be either empty or crowded given the time of day and the kind of stuff in there. One near was pretty fucking dead and dying for a while, some of the big stores are gone, but then like a few years ago some really small weird niche shops started opening and it's back to mildly crowded. There's a guy that's store is just a Lego store. Like it's not an official Lego store it's just a fucking guy buying and selling sets and parts off people that's got a bunch of shelves lined up with built sets and minifigs on them. That one's seemed to have the most staying power in that specific mall because many similarly niche shops have come and gone but that one moved to a bigger store that used to be something else.

My local mall has a used games store filling the void by GameStop no longer selling games older than a certain point, I've gotten some pretty good deals on PS2 and Xbox stuff.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

That impact was very delayed for me, only recently has the JC Penney and Sears died at my local mall, through the 1990s and into the 2000s it was still very healthy, however I did notice less niche stuff once we got to the 2000s and by the end of the 2000s when the Waldenbooks (which I've always sorely missed) and the KB Toys closed it had started to decline.

Oh, plenty of Sears kept shuffling on for a decade or two, but they weren't the sears of the 80s and early 90s.

Sears of the 70s, 80s and even into the first couple years of the 90s was /the place/. It wasn't the place for second-run toys and electronics nobody wanted, it was the place hot new toys debuted for Christmas. It was a place that swung big enough dick in the industry that the Atari 2600 had a Sears-only run called the Sears Telegames Video Arcade. It was the exact same thing as an Atari 2600, just rebranded for Sears. Sears sold good shit, by and large - lets not look too closely at their disastrous partnership with Packard Bell. Didn't matter what you wanted - clothes, household appliances, a new TV or a computer, toys for the kids... They were one of the old school of "department stores" that would be the forerunner to the Big Box stores. Combine this with their amazing catalogs, and they were basically the Amazon of the day for... ironically pretty much everything except books and music and such, which they never really did.

 

[Mnutu]

Oh, plenty of Sears kept shuffling on for a decade or two, but they weren't the sears of the 80s and early 90s.

Sears of the 70s, 80s and even into the first couple years of the 90s was /the place/. It wasn't the place for second-run toys and electronics nobody wanted, it was the place hot new toys debuted for Christmas. It was a place that swung big enough dick in the industry that the Atari 2600 had a Sears-only run called the Sears Telegames Video Arcade. It was the exact same thing as an Atari 2600, just rebranded for Sears. Sears sold good shit, by and large - lets not look too closely at their disastrous partnership with Packard Bell. Didn't matter what you wanted - clothes, household appliances, a new TV or a computer, toys for the kids... They were one of the old school of "department stores" that would be the forerunner to the Big Box stores. Combine this with their amazing catalogs, and they were basically the Amazon of the day for... ironically pretty much everything except books and music and such, which they never really did.

I still miss going to Sears and buying Craftsman, now I have to go to Lowe’s, which isn’t bad but still.

 

[General Tug Boat]

Man times square looks like shit, but not used to getting great news on here!

 

[A Logging Company]

You know the economy is crumbling when Disney is recoiling in pain. I have a feeling this has more to do with shitty leadership than it does with the economy itself though.

The two are directly related.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

The two are directly related.

I meant leadership of the company, not the country.

 

[A Logging Company]

I meant leadership of the company, not the country.

Leadership in both the private and public sector are on a steep decline, with a completely fucked supply chain not helping.

 

[mario if smoke weed]

Good, the less of Disney the better.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

By the time I was really getting into mall shit Media Play was already gone

 

[UselessIdiot]

Here's one I like that I've linked to before:

Exploring a Huge Abandoned Mall - 1 Million Sq Ft! - YouTube

(there's even an old Di$ney store)


The Arrowhead Mall in Arizona is still doing pretty well despite being in Current Year America.

(even after it temporarily closed in 2020 because of coronapanic)

A Saturday Afternoon At The Mall: Arrowhead Towne Center | Retail Archaeology - YouTube

The Chandler Fashion Center in East Valley Phoenix (Chandler AZ) was and is still doing good too. That was a mall family would constantly comment was like "their malls in the good ol' days" whenever they visited me in Arizona. Nice food court too (along with the stuff I mentioned in my previous post). It seems like given the climate of a locale (either really hot or cold), malls will survive if the climate is severe enough (Arizona, Minnesota, parts of Israel, etc). Otherwise, they're dead or in small gilded/ultra-affluent pockets.

Both Arrowhead Mall and Chandler Fashion Center both pale in comparison to Scottsdale Fashion Square, which is in the top ten for mall revenues in the country. It's still my favorite mall to go to too.

 

[Quijibo69]

By the time I was really getting into mall shit Media Play was already gone

They didn't last long. They where only around for around 10 years where I grew up 1996 to about early 2007. Thanks, Amazon.

 

[Sneed's Feed And Seed]

I'ven ever seen a Dicks as an end-cap, but that would be cool.

Spoiler: It's less cool than you'd think it is.

 

[Echo_Ender]

Our local mall started dying when the neighborhood got "Diversified" via slum lords opening a bunch of section 8 housing.

Hard to keep your upper-middle-class customer base coming to Sears and JC Penny's when Tyrone and DeShawn are thug-walking around, yelling so they can hear each other over their boom boxes.

Then, while half their stores were fleeing as fast as possible, the mall owners decided to expand and put a bunch of mini-stores out front like a mini-gym, eyeglasses store, and restaurants.

Those lasted less than a year and now the mall is a hilariously ghetto, graffiti-filled mess with nothing worth visiting except the food court.

 

[Aqua Panda]

Man what the fuck is even left in malls at this point?

Not a whole lot besides clothing stores.

I remember when you could find hobby shops and even small grocery stores in malls. Now it's just overpriced clothing. Mainly teenager shit and whatever "fast fashion" is trending.

 

[northstar747]

@Dom Cruise regading spencers go in there and see that they have section in the back that sells sex toys. Basically if you ont have an amazon account cant or wont go to a sex shop....aka highschool girls.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

I had to return a tux from a friends wedding in 2019 and got to see the Sears in my mall literally close it's gate for the last time.

Shit was surreal. The Dicks Sporting goods is apparently fleeing the mall and taking over an old Burlington Coat Factory store across the street since the BCF moved into the closed Toys R Us further down the street.

Retail is fucking dying all around me lol.

 

[LurkTrawl]

Fuck Disney, all of their movies were shit and currently still are shit.

 

[Sped Xing]

Am I the only person who never even knew such a thing existed?

 

[kcbbq]

I still miss going to Sears and buying Craftsman, now I have to go to Lowe’s, which isn’t bad but still.

On a somewhat happy note, Craftsman is back to being made in America and has a lot what made it good stuff back. Not quite the "find a rusted screwdriver that's been sitting in a field for 30 years, trade it in for a new one", but definitely not the Chinese garbage-tier the had been for a while. It's OK quality for an ok price again, though.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Not a whole lot besides clothing stores.

I remember when you could find hobby shops and even small grocery stores in malls. Now it's just overpriced clothing. Mainly teenager shit and whatever "fast fashion" is trending.

Man, even the name "fast fashion" sounds like some abomination that shouldn't exist I tell ya hwhat.