It’s practically Halloween, and here in 2023 that means that the holiday season is about to start. Back in the 1980s, the shopping frenzy didn’t generally kick off until after Thanksgiving, and it was often the busiest in the two weeks leading up to the holiday itself. Of course, there was no online ordering back then, and catalog shopping meant a 6-8 week delay between ordering and getting what you wanted. So, of course, most folks back then went to the shopping mall.
If you know, you know
That’s a saying the younger folks have, by the way, if you’ve never heard it. At its core it means that you either have a true, deep understanding of something, or you do not. As Google tells me that most of the readers of this blog are a little older, I’m guessing most of you know about shopping malls. Today, of course, they’re generally seen as dead spaces that smart people avoid. But, as I recently pointed out in another Fun Friday installment, the mall was once the hub of American culture. And, it’s fair to say that at the center of that culture sat Sears.
Certainly if you’re the sort of person who finds it impossible to imagine a bustling mall, you’ll find it doubly impossible to imagine people actually shopping at Sears. Yet for most of its existence, it was among the largest retailers in the world. The Sears name once adorned the world’s tallest building, and its distribution centers across the country were legendarily huge.
It’s safe to say that the one-two punch of discounters like Walmart and easy online shopping killed Sears. It’s a shame, especially since — and I know this will be hard to believe — but at one time Sears was tech-forward. And, I have the proof.
Flash back 41 years
YouTuber “Vampire Robot” brings us this video:
The best I can tell, this was shot sometime about December 10, 1982 give or take 5 days. My guess is that it was shot in a Washington, DC area shopping mall. Maybe one of our readers will be able to identify it. The whole thing appears to be raw footage for an ABC News segment about the holiday shopping season.
What you get there is a small sampling of the tech goodies that Sears had on display. The company had a strong partnership with Atari, but you can also see Intellivision and Vectrex hardware on display. And, surrounding all of it, a bustling mass of people dedicated to buying something interesting at one of the country’s busiest stores. Getting the washer/dryer of your dreams may not seem like your idea of fun, but I guarantee someone loved it.
My own memories of the time
Sears was but one of the retailers in my area growing up, and in my opinion it wasn’t even the most interesting. But, I’ll admit that you could find nearly anything there and pretty much everything you bought was built to last. There was a time that Craftsman hand tools, then a Sears brand, were warrantied for life. It wasn’t much after this video was shot that I cavalierly walked into a Sears with a crescent wrench dating back to the 1940s, that had finally given up the ghost. The salesperson took the broken wrench, handed me a new one off the rack, and there was no more to it.
Today, I have Craftsman hand tools that date back 50 years or more. Lowe’s supposedly honors the lifetime warranty that every tool has, but I haven’t had to even try to get a replacement in decades. That’s how well Sears stuff used to be built.
Of the brands shown in this video, most including Sears itself, are either out of business or simply a shadow of their former selves. Craftsman hand tools are still made, and still claim a lifetime warranty. But it’s clear that the quality isn’t the same. Atari went down in flames just a year or two after this video, and Vectrex has never been seen again either. Kenmore appliances are out there, and so is Sears, albeit in name only. The shell of the company was bought and turned into an online retailer. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know that either, until I went to their web site.
Will we feel the same about video shot today?
That’s the real question, right? So much of what we value today is virtual. We shop online, we watch and listen to content through the internet. It’s hard to imagine someone in 2064 looking at a video shot today with such nostalgia. I guess all I can do is hope that I’m still there to find out.
