What non-obsolete things are now difficult to find in brick and mortar stores?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m looking into buying an electric blanket and have noticed that the brick and mortar stores in town (Corpus Christi) don’t carry them on the shelves. Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Dillard’s, and so on all have them available to order and then pick up, but none carry them in the store. This got me thinking about consumer goods in general. What sort of things could you just go into any old supermarket or department store and buy in the past, but now have to be ordered or bought at highly specialized stores? Here’s a few restrictions.

  1. It has to be something that’s not obsolete. No VCRs, cassette tape players, or buggy whips.

  2. I’m thinking about categories of things in general, not specific brands of stuff that is still commonly available in stores. RC Cola and such don’t count…

2

Just a guess, but what about a vacuum cleaner. I used to head to the Kmart near me, and buy a vacuum cleaner when I needed one. Now, the Kmart itself isn’t there anymore.

3

Targets & Walmart still carry Vacuums in store.

Lowes & Home Depot might, I’ll check.

Lowes has them. Aisle 31 in my local one.

Home Depot has a small selection in Aisle 34. It includes a pretty good Dyson.

4

You went to Lowes and back in, like, record time!

5

The wonders of Lowes and “Hope” Depot is you can look it up and see if it is in the store. Then it says the Aisle & Bay. At Lowes is usually there and Home Depot it is there about half the time. Though they are getting better.

I’m a pretty serious DIY guy and have to know these things. :slight_smile:

To the OP. Under the cabinet mounted Can Openers can no longer be found in stores and have to be ordered.

6

I depend on an internet connection for my job. Not to mention, my kids will freak out if the internet connection goes down.

So when our router died a few years ago I wasn’t about to wait for Amazon to deliver one; I drove to a Best Buy, picked one up, and we were back online the same day.

Now all the Best Buys are shut down and I’m not even sure where I’d be able to go to buy a router if I needed one same day.

7

How far is Staples? They still have routers, probably just one overpriced model, but they had them within the year.

Our Best Buy is still doing fine, I didn’t realize many closed.

I just checked, there is a small selection of routers at my local Targets.

8

Books were the first thing that came to my mind.

It’s summer. You can find them all over the place when the weather starts to get cold. I don’t think seasonal items should really count here. You probably aren’t going to find swim suits in December either.

Walmart.

9

You don’t have a Barnes and Nobles nearby?
Five and Below always has a small selection of discounted books.

Just verified, Targets still has a books section. Mainly “Best sellers”, but they have some. I’ll bet Walmart does also.

10

I can’t think of anything that’s hard to find in brick and mortar stores year round. I’m not surprised that it’s difficult to find an electric blanket in stores in June - but I know I saw heated throws/blankets in stores last October/November because I was thinking of buying one as a Christmas gift.

11

Nope. The nearest one is all the way down in Baltimore. Gettysburg has a college bookstore. The only bookstore left in our town is a small shop that sells used books.

Walmart and Target do each have a small section of books, but their selection is too limited to be of much use. I never go into 5 Below so I have no idea what their selection is like.

12

Ok, I suppose there are still a few options, though I wonder what sort of selection they would have. I currently have a fairly high-end Nighthawk router.

13

Damn, that’s sad. I forget sometimes there are advantages to living in Central Jersey Suburban Sprawl. We’ve got everything within 10-30 minutes except a German Restaurant.

14

Interesting that you put the s on the end of Target but not on the end of Walmart. I would have expected neither one or both. I think there have been several threads about putting an s at the end of store names. I probably do it all the time myself and don’t even know it. Oops, I think I am derailing this thread.

15

Staples already mentioned, but Walmart and Target also carry home routers.

16

Where do you live that all of the Best Buy stores are gone? They’re still around, though fewer of them, in my area.

17

The one in the Chicago suburbs that was my go-to location no longer shows up on their website’s location finder. Next week I’ll actually drive by just to see if it’s gone.

18

Back to the OP:

There must be a lot of toys you use to be able to go into Toys Я Us for that can only be found online now. I know the more popular stuff is in Target & Walmart but that is still a fraction of what Toys Я Us use to carry.

19

Computer components in general. Unless you live near a Micro Center or an odd independent shop, you’re probably stuck with Amazon or NewEgg for motherboards, processors, RAM, GPUs, HDD/SSDs, SATA cables, etc. Best Buy might carry a very small selection and every once in a while Walmart or some other box store makes an abortive attempt to carry a selection but the days of seeing a decent spread at Best Buy or going to Fry’s, CompUSA or other electronics box stores is long gone.

20

I actually have a nearby independent store that has computer and electronics parts. But even they won’t have GPU, CPU or motherboards. Not even a tower. The cables, ram, hard drives and more generic stuff like that they have. In fact I think you can still buy an internal DVD drive there. Probably been on the shelf for years though.