How do you like that? I never knew the “K” in K-Mart was for Kresge. Thanks for that link!
And the chameleons.
Woolworths was a cross between a trip to a toystore, a candyshop, MsBurger’s & the Zoo.
Paradise for a kid.
Ours - “Harvey’s” - had the best penny candy counter. We used to ride our bikes down and buy bags of chocolate stars and gummi bears. And I always got my paint-by-number sets there. It was also where we kids would go to buy Mom’s and Dad’s birthday/Christmas/Mother’s/Father’s Day presents. I remember being very pleased with myself after buying my dad a box of handkerchiefs that had a “G” embroidered on them. Neither his first nor last name begins with “G” but the town we lived in did so I felt it was perfectly appropriate.
Man, I feel old.
Wow, some great memories in this thread! We had a Ben Franklin’s near our house when I was a kid; everyone in the neighborhood just called it the “five-and-dime”. All the things the other posters have mentioned: toys in open bins, that wax magic slate thing, the sewing notions section. I had a killer sweet tooth; my favorite was the penny candy section. All glass-sided open bins at a level for little kids to get at. At one time, the candy was actually 2 for a penny; if you had a nickel or a dime (what wealth that was!), you could spend an amazing amount of time selecting your assortment.
And there was a Woolworth’s and an SS Kresge near my parent’s store. The Kresge was right next door, so we got to go there often. All these stores (and an independent called Morris Variety Store) had creaky wooden floors; they were almost tiny compared to the stores we’re used to now, and they were packed with stuff from floor to ceiling. The stores near our family’s shop were extra-special, as the managers and staff knew our parents. We had to behave, lest we embarrass Mom and Dad, but we could wander freely since we were watched by everyone on the street. At Morris, my sisters and I were allowed up to the second floor, which was a mystical wonderland of older and slower-moving merchandise. And sometimes, we got to go to the lunch counter at the Kresge store - the counter lady wouldn’t let us order anything Mom wouldn’t approve of, but sometimes she’d give us extra potato chips or top off a soda. Not every time, so we couldn’t expect it, but often enough that we could hope for it and be absolutely delighted when it happened.
Didn’t k-Mart and Sears merge?
I can’t believe they would sell you a turtle for a dime.
A small 5 & dime near Pewaukee Lake had plastic models of WW2 warships & airplanes, & I built many of them. Very cheap, very fun.
Oh yeah! Mustangs, Corsairs, and Skyraiders…tubes of plastic cement, painting stuff with a brush and a little bottle of paint, soaking your decals in a cereal bowl of water. Then, you get Dad to hang’em from the ceiling over your bed for you in great dogfight poses: “no Dad, not level…it should be diving and banking to the right…yeah, like that!” Did you have those wood gliders and rubber-band planes that you’d punch out of a sheet of balsa and put together? Like these. I must have bought hundreds of these; they always ended up destroyed in a crash.
Yes, K-Mart is (or started out as) an expanded version of Kresge’s. (For a while in the 70’s, we still had a Kresge’s in town, that was about the size of a drug store or Dollar General, as well as 3 K-Marts.)
And, similarly, the expanded version of Woolworth’s was Woolco.
Yes! My brother would get those rubber band wind up balsa airplanes and we’d have a ball. I remember the dime store being very clean and light and airy.
My favorite candy (until I was introduced to Charleston Chew–back when the bars were twice as long as any other candy bar) were the hard candy root beer ones. They were shaped like tiny beer barrels and they sort of fizzed in your mouth, just a touch. My dime store did not have a lunch counter that I remember (we probably just never ate there).
You could (and did) buy almost anything at the dime store. It was a combo of some light hardware, garden stuff(including lots of outdoor toys), sewing, household “dry goods”, toiletries, candy, pets, and other notions. Target is most like it now, IMO. The dollar stores are not organized and don’t seem to have any focus (not sure how to say what I mean).
You are the first person I’ve ever connected with that knew about fuzzy wuzzy bear soap. Yes it worked. At night I took my bath and in the morning it had grown hair, or at least as close as dried soap foam can resemble hair.
The dime stores carried everything, and were like a Kmart Target or WalMart today, but they were on a smaller scale. Kresge’s was the original name of Kmart, and they had one on the Capital Square in Madison until the last two decade. They are not like dollar stores, because they carried better product and selection most of the time.
I favored cruisers, destroyer escorts, carriers & battleships.
Mmmmm - I can almost smell the donuts frying at the front of Kresge’s. An hear the wooden floors creak as you walk over them. Good memories. (I miss my grandmother so bad right about now!)
Our five-and-dime was called TG&Y - I have no idea what those letters stood for. I remember the Fuzzy Wuzzy soap!
I didn’t buy a turtle at my store. I bought a caiman! A real live baby caiman, for $5. My mom freaked. Heh.
About all I remember is the toy department, and the pet department.
My brothers used to buy those and aim them at me. They had another kind that had a prop that was powered by a rubberband. They’d wind that to point of almost breaking and aim it at my very long hair.
This is a great thread! Just within the last 5 or 10 years the Ben Franklin near me closed and I miss it to much! You could always find a frame there, $5. If I needed something, I’d go there and wander around until I found it because they always had it.
Woolworth still exists in Germany and the UK. For those of you who remember Woolies, you’d feel at home visiting these stores, except that they’re frequently smaller than the US stores and have no lunch counters. I got my floor lamp there for £5!
Wiki says Thomlinson, Gosselin and Young. There was one near here too, which morphed into a Ben Franklin. I drive by there several times a week but couldn’t tell you what it’s called now. There was a gas explosion in the building back in the 70’s which killed several people, including the son of a former Iowa governor.
Anyone in Seattle ever go to Fuji’s on Greenwood Avenue? Mom and I always wondered how they passed a fire inspection – narrow aisles, very crowded, but with lots of cool Asian stuff.
I’d forgotten about the paint-by-number kits and the model airplane and car kits – and naval stuff too, battleships and destroyers. And bubble bath.
We had classic dime stores here until fairly late in the retail game-- Woolworth’s and GC Murphy held on to the bitter end in Indiana (closing in 1997 and 2001 respectively), while they left other markets much earlier. I suspect it was because both chains had indoor mall locations here-- their strip-mall and standalone locations closed first. Locally, they actually outlasted most of the discount store chains-- Ayr-Way, Zayre, Ames, Hills, Venture. There are still a number of Duckwall’s/ALCO dime stores in small towns throughout Indiana.
Dime stores never felt like a unique retail concept to me, though I’d probably feel different if I’d grown up when they literally sold products for a dime. Non-supercenter Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart stores are pretty much just bigger dime stores-- sewing notions, mothballs, pet supplies, knickknacks and a snack bar… all there. (And, like dime stores, these are beginning to look quaint as the industry moves to supercenters… walking into a “division 1” Wal-Mart feels like a step back in time to me.) Dollar General, Family Dollar, and the big pharmacy chains all seem to be variants on the dime store as well.
Sure they would. You didn’t use to have to break paper money for virtually everything. The title character of The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, set in the mid 1950s, living in a CT suburb, and commuting to his job in NYC, is earning $7K annually as the story opens, and gets another job that pays 9K.
Considering what that lifestyle would take now it seems there has been at least twentyfold inflation since then, when you could buy all sorts of things for a dime.
Ahhh, Woolworth’s. I used to go with my grandparents.
Grandaddy would get tropical fish supplies and Grandmother would buy yarn and pattern books. Sometimes they’d let me pick out a jigsaw puzzle-- what fun!
The snack counter had popcorn with yellow seasoning on it that was 'way better than what you could make at home. And Icees-- always half cola/half cherry, we called that a “suicide.” I don’t think I’ve had an Icee in thirty years.
Remember this toy?: A cardboard picture of a bald man, covered with plastic. Inside the plastic there were iron shavings and you used a little magnetic stylus to give the man hair and eyebrows and a moustache, etc.
Ah, Woolworth’s. We always called it the dime store. It was a cross between a modern drug store and a smaller K-Mart. It had a little bit of everything. I liked to go there and look at the plants and pets. Every once in awhile I’d get a fish or mouse or gerbil or turtle or something. They never lived long. Partly because we were kids who didn’t know how to care for pets and partly because everything they sold was half dead before you bought it anyway.
My favorite thing about the place was the lunch counter. Mom would treat me to it once in awhile and I loved getting a burger, potato chips and a chocolate shake. It was like a Rockwell painting.