My toy hunt list, circa 1991

I was looking through my old Tomart's Action Figure price guide and found my toy collector buying lists that I had written in the front and back pages. This would have been 1991-1993 and list some items I wanted to add to my collection and what stores I had seen them. Lots of GI Joes  and Transformers at places like Children's Palace, Pamida, Gibsons and 1/2 Price Store.

Vintage Store Photos featuring "Kiddierama Cartoon Theater" machines

  I was looking around for info on the old "Kiddierama Cartoon Theater" Coin-op machines and came across a guy restoring one at billyseven.net/

To anyone unfamiliar with these, they were movie booths that for a quarter, you could watch one of 3 loaded 7 min cartoon shorts. I have vivid memories of one of these in the catalog pick-up area of the lower level of Sears at Crossroads Mall in Omaha, NE. My mom must have catalog ordered alot of stuff because I remember those trips to the basement of Sears, a Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse or Deputy Dawg cartoon and then a trip to the Sears Candy and Nut counter for chocolate covered orange sticks every time we went to the Mall.

Back to Billy. This guy, Billy's got some great photos of his machine, a link to a youtube video of it in action and coolest of all, a PDF download of the original Buyer's Manual. As a vintage store nut, this was a jackpot, since there are a couple of dozen photos of the machines in stores with the stores and towns listed. Plus a great color photo and some advertising. Check out his site for the PDF. To save some hunting and to get the images out online, I've take screencaps of the vintage store photos and have typed up a list so other vintage discount store fans can find them easily.

If you have any memories of these "Kiddierama Cartoon Theaters" please share in the comments. Better you if you have old or new photos of any, feel free to email me at matt@grindhousecomics.net

-Matt
aka Dr. G

 

Stores featured:
"Treasury Discount" Niles, Illinois
"Belscot Discount" Waukegan, Illinois
"Montgomery Wards" Evergreen Park, Illinois
"Montgomery Wards" Deerfield, Illinois
"Montgomery Wards" Mt. Prospect, Illinois
"JC Penny's" Bloomington, Illinois
"Bresler Ice Cream" Northgate Mall, Lafayette, Louisiana
"Woolco" Lafayette, Louisiana
"Dairy Queen" Roosevelt Blvd., Jacksonville Florida
"Montgomery Wards" Northgate Mall, Lafayette, Louisiana
"Dairy Queen" Normandy Blvd., Jacksonville Florida
"Randhurst Mall" Mt. Prospect, Illinois
"Belvidere Mall" Waukegan, Illinois
"Lakehurst Mall" Waukegan, Illinois
"Deerbrook Mall" Deerfield, Illinois

More Children's Palace/Child World goodness

I got some more cool pics from former CW/CP guru, Bernard









Bernard also sent along a Child World video from youtube



Some other CW/CP videos

Lost Retail: Venture stores

Here's some background culled from the various online sources:

Venture Stores, Inc.
A former chain of retail stores that operated in the American Midwest. The company operated over 90 stores, and was based out of the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, Missouri.
Opened: 1970 in St. Louis, MO
Headquarters: O'Fallon, MO
Employees: 18,000
Website: www.venturestores.com (archived at Deadmalls.com)

History
1970: First store opened in in the St. Louis suburb of Overland (location became a Kmart and is now a Home Depot).
1976: Expanded to 20 units.
1978: Venture purchased 23 Turn Style locations in the Chicago area from Jewel food stores, and expanded to over 40 locations. They were the largest discount chain in Chicago with inner city locations other than Zayre/Ames.
1985: Over 50 stores, most of which were in Chicago and St. Louis.
1990: Venture became a private corporation, operating in eight states: Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Indiana.
1995: 115 stores in 9 states, having expanded into Texas in 1993.
1998: Bankruptcy. Stores closed in late April



Laura, a Venture fan and super-friend of the blog was kind enough to share some of her cool Venture collectables to help me round out this post

Ad from Oklahoma Cit, Christmas 1984


Venture's advertising slogan during the 1980s was "Save With Style." In the 1990s, Venture used two other slogans; the first was tied to the remodel and
restrategizing to be like Kohl's and that slogan was "See What's New For You!". By the time they closed they used the slogan "See What A Little Money Can Buy".

Bankruptcy
By the late 1990s, the chain found that it was unable to compete against other retail chains, such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart. Venture tried to return to its founding principles as an upscale discounter and remodeled most of its stores. While facing vast competition Venture made a fatal mistake trying to expand into Texas instead of protecting its core markets. Venture sold the Texas stores to Kmart in 1996 and closed its distribution center in Corsicana, Texas. The company entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 20, 1998, and tried to operate with a smaller number of stores. The effort was not successful, and the company announced its closing on April 27, 1998. Most of the former Venture buildings were absorbed into other chains, such as Kmart, Kohl's, ShopKo, and Burlington Coat Factory

Children's Palace and Child World toy stores revisited

Had some new Children's Palace and Child World items to share. So lets take another look at my all-time favorite toy store.

New to my collection:

A Children's Palace & Child World Ertl toy truck, in the box



Close up of the trailer


An old Child World toy truck by Majorette, on the card


An old Children's Palace toy truck by Majorette


A double page CP/CW video game ad from Marvel's Robocop II adaptation


Peter Panda puffy stickers


Some CW/CP items graciously sent in by readers

From Bernard, a former Child World employee was nice enough to take pics of some of the memorabilia he had saved.







From Brandon, an excellent shot of the old style CP store sign.


From around the web: (i.e. photos are not mine, I'm just sharing what I've found)

A Peter Panda board game


An old store pic


Former store locations around the US










So, so, so close...
In my constant search to find a photo of the old Omaha Children's Palace location, I found this great old pic of the store prior, to CP. The spot was occupied by a Handy Dan (long defunct Hardware store chain)


A must read
Here's a excerpt from a reader of the original Children's Palace post
http://geektarded.blogspot.com/2007/06/lets-go-shopping-childrens-palace.html

"Dr. Geektarded, I had the pleasure of helping to open the store in Omaha. Unfortunately, this is the only time I have ever visited your fine city. I was involved with over 20 store openings.

I also remember when they filmed "The Color of Money". We were excited that Children's Palace (CP) would be in a major movie. I recall that CP was paid $25,000 for a day of shooting for the scenes. This equated to one days average sales for that location. The "customers" in the scenes were filled in by store personnel and their families. I still watch the movie on occasion.

Dr. you ask what happened to all of the clearance items? Well, we sold them! (obviously) But here is the rest of the story: The reason why CP had so many "old" items was their "pack-away system". We would store all boxed merchandise above the area in the actual aisles of the store. All pegged items (i.e matchbox, hot wheels, seasonal) would be boxed up and stored in the warehouse. Here is where the issue happened. As the store sold down items like Matchbox cars, we would get another few cases in on our truck so we would fill the shelves with this product. The overstock Matchbox cars in the pack-aways stayed in the warehouse, never seeing the light of day. This inefficient way of stock balancing was one of the many factors to the demise of CP. Ideally, today's retailers have eliminated the back stock all together as to not tie up these dollars. I recall meeting a Matchbox collector who asked to see any unopened cases in the warehouse. He was like a kid in a candy store as he looked through the 5+ year old cases.

During the closeout procedures, we had incremental markdowns that were sent down by corporate for 10 weeks. (i.e. 10% off, 20% off) It was in the last few days that we went from 70% off to 90% off retail prices. We continuously pulled the old pack-aways out of the back room as merchandise sold down. WOW.... all of these old items came out!!! Old Mego figures (like the Spiderman you have pictured. I bought a case of 6 for 50 cents each!)Michael Jackson dolls, Starting lineup, and so on... I bought several items... but I couldn't buy them all. I still have these items MOC. I only had one child then (age 1) and boxed them up. Now, I see these items on EBAY so I never let my kids play with them. (Shame on me)

The last hour of the last day, my liquidator consultant had me put up a sign that said "Everything you can fit in your cart - only $10". Needless to say, everything was gone within the hour. I took a video camera and video taped some of the mayhem on the last day. Fortunately, I had a job lined up and was paid nearly 3 months severance/remaining vacation pay if I stayed to the end."
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I'm was so happy to hear about this "pack-away system". That explains all the old stock and why the aisles were literally packed to the rafters. At the Omaha location, on the shelving above the new stock, was this Tetris like packing of old boxed vehicles, playsets, etc. Then, along the back of the store was more boxed toys and aisles of carded toys. And lastly, the front entrance of the store was filled with closeout items too. Huge displays of Masters of the Universe, Voltron, Gobots, Rock Lords and the like, years after they had run their course.

The store was probably 1/3 closeout items. It was honestly a crazy way of doing business, but all those old toys are some of my fondest memories of the chain.