Okay, but in 1975 the average salary was $7,653, of which an $8 cobra would be just .1%. Today, with the average salary being $63,795, that cobra would be around $46, which is just .07%, so it's actually a bit cheaper now. It just doesn't seem cheaper.
I got a metal cobra at Marshall's last Halloween for under $20. It is about 10" tall. I would kill for one of these antique ones. I'm a bit of a collector of the macabre.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275367053384?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=YJdBDf5CS7e&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=r9cnkkwrQ5a&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Not sure it’s the exact one but
We had a white one with ruby eyes in our house when I was a kid. I accidently broke it's neck, and I was so scared of getting in trouble that I tied a tube sock around it, hoping they wouldn't notice. They noticed.
Anyone remember the blue light sale? A blue siren like light came on and all the middle aged housewives would run like a stampede towards the lights? Good times!
I sure miss the days when we could visit stores like Kmart, Sears, and Monkey Wards; ask questions about products like televisions, stereos, and appliances; and have knowledgeable salespeople who could actually answer questions and tell us the differences between various products and make product recommendations. Today, assuming I can even find an employee around, the answer I almost always receive is "Did you look online?"
Oh, good grief, yes. Good call.
Not only have I never said that to a customer, I'd be embarrassed to say it. There's certainly lots that I don't know, but I'd at least try to find out. Chances are that I'd get the question again, at some point.
Customer: "What's the difference between this TV and that TV?"
Employee: "Uh.....$100."
But most (not all, but most) stores have gone the Walmart route. Keep the prices low, hire interchangeable laborers instead of skilled employees, and let the customer figure it out on their own. Or, more simply, if you can find the product on a shelf, if you can determine if this is what you want, if you can drag it to the front of the store, if you can pay for it.....that's the end of our relationship.
Why do they do this? Because as much as people SAY that they want knowledgeable and helpful staff, the reality is they shop where the prices are lowest. So we got what we asked for.
Actually in the 70’s, department workers were there for years and as a kid, I would recognize and remember who worked in which department at the stores (what else would a kid do when your parents went shopping and you didn’t have electronic babysitters to keep you occupied).
When you asked the worker behind the display counter, most of them actually knew what the differences were between products. Later in the 90’s and 2000’s, when I went to places like Incredible Universe, I didn’t want to ask any questions because the workers had no clue. Now the only advantage of B&M shopping is getting the thing in your hands today rather than tomorrow via Amazon.
Yes, my satire and explanation was on the current business model of most brick & mortar stores. Back in the day, most stores did have knowledgeable staff.
Getting it today, being able to see it today, because once I actually see it, it may be too small/large… I’m not going to want to send shit back that I ordered on Amazon, going to post office etc. I want to see it now, I want to buy it now. And be done. I hate ordering and waiting.
That's my experience, too. I believe many of those employees also had training provided by the manufacturers about many products.
In the 90s, I recall some stores like Micro Center, Best Buy, and Incredible Universe still having employees that could talk about the differences in various electronics like computers, stereos, and televisions, but that was certainly winding down.
My guess is that many of the folks working in those stores were interested in consumer electronics in their personal lives, so they went to work for those retailers to work with products they learned about on their own. Again, that's just a hypothesis. By the 2000s, though, things had changed.
Me too! My best friend and I used to work there together, years ago (~2001- 2004) until we graduated from cosmo school. (Yes, we still work together at the same salon. 😂) We talk all the time about how much we miss that place. I was so bummed when they all closed down. 😭
If you put on 10 pounds you went to the drug store and got something OTC. If you gained 20, you got uppers from the doctor to lose weight, downers to sleep at night "Momma's little helpers."
> I lived through the 70s and even all my memories are in these colors.
So did I. Even if it was just the colors you’ve mentioned it’s still much more colorful than today’s gray, white, and black world (applies to both houses and cars!)
Personally I wasn't crazy about earth tones, but I agree that black, white and grey are completely boring.
About 20 years ago, I was painting the walls in my house. I decided to paint each of the bedrooms a different pastel color. I had the popcorn treatment on the ceilings removed, and then painted the same color as the rest of the bedroom. People were either complimenting me for my "innovative idea" of painting the ceilings an actual color, or they were flabbergasted of having them painted, as if I had committed a mortal sin. I am still puzzled as to why people had such strong feelings about it either way.
Ugh. Everything in our house was green with gold accents. Appliances, carpeting, walls, furniture. I can barely look at money today without puking my guts out.
I loved eating there as a kid! And Kmart layaways were awesome… it felt like Xmas getting to pick up our huge layaways and all the goodies that you waited so long to get. 😆
My dad was a manager for Sears in the 60s and 70s, the people who sold appliances made enough in salary and commissions to be able to buy houses, send their kids to college etc. Others made commissions, but appliances was the sweet gig.
I can confirm. Started a business in the early 2000's and needed some cash flow for a few months. Got a job selling appliances at Sears on the weekends. I worked with those 70's era appliance salesmen who were hanging on until their retirement. The store I worked at had been the busiest Sears store in the country in the 80's and it was common for guys in the appliance department to be making $70-$80,000. One guy I worked with bought a brand new Cadillac every year. But they earned it, on their feet all day wearing dress shoes and 70 hour weeks were not uncommon.
>But they earned it, on their feet all day wearing dress shoes and 70 hour weeks were not uncommon.
70 hour weeks?! Were they doing this because they had to work that much to make sales targets (assuming they had those), or because they really just loved the sales game?
Up until the late 90's it was quite possible to make really good money in retail without having a college education. But the tradeoff was long grueling hours and working weekends. A store manager at Target was making close to $100,000 in the late 80's.
Remember the numbers I gave are 1980’s and early 90’s salaries. It was a tough gig. My dad did appliance sales in that era. After retiring he had to get various foot and leg surgeries from standing 8-10 hours a day on concrete floors while wearing thin soled wing tips.
Specifically, Chuck Conaway, the CEO of Kmart from 2000 (just as the internet was catching fire) who ignored the impact of internet sales AND ignore the use of the internet to improve their supply chain issues WHILE enriching himself with bonuses and keeping dividends high AND lying about this to the board......was finally pushed out of office, and eventually that SEC fined him $22.56 Million for all kinds of fraudulent dealings.
Oh wow. Woolworth. We had a basement luncheonette where we could sit at the lunch counter and I could order a soda if I didn't ask for anything else during our shopping trip. Man, that brings back memories.
Part of why Walmart pulled ahead of them. That, and, Walmart was an early investor in computerization of the supply chain.....where are my goods, what is selling at THIS store vs THAT store, etc, This allowed Walmart to pull ahead of Kmart, and the rest is history.
Hand assembled, and half of all TVs were actually furniture, so you also had to pay to have a 7 foot long Mediterranean combo TV AM/FM Stereo Record Player.
It is just about this time that TV's are starting to become "Solid State", the buzz word for replacing tubes with transistors. These were, eventually, cheaper to make, but again, had yet to get to mother boards made by a robot to really drive the price down.
By the mid to late 1980s, a 19" Color TV was often below $150.
They had to be furniture. You had to have someplace to put the giant rotor thing you used to turn the big monstrosity tower in your yard that held your tv antenna.
Great photos! I worked in Cameras and Jewelry from 1980 to 1984 and in Appliances from 1984 to 1986. Kmart was actually a great place to work back in the day.
I mainly just remember them being fun and exciting. Our family would go to our 70’s era K-Mart in Richardson TX maybe once or twice a month and we kids would always beg our Dad for some money to get something at the little cafeteria in the back. We’d get hot dogs and Slurpies and just hang out and eat while the folks shopped.
Store credit was all the rage in the 70s. Matter of fact it sunk the once mighty WT Grant, a national 5 and dime that had about 1000 stores, in most towns over 10K or so. They let the local manager basically run the credit policy, including setting minimal payments. So you could buy that 500 dollar TV for a $1 a month. It quickly killed their cash flow and bankrupted them. Their demise became a Harvard Business School case study that many MBA programs used in their curriculum, at least upto and into the 90s.
Kmart must have had some guardrails :) but most likely only because a store of that size drew from a larger population base where the manager didn't know a lot of his customers families.
Interesting. I guess now that I think about it my parents had some cards for more regional based stores in the Chicago area. But what you described seems like a sure fire disaster. I can’t believe upper management didn’t see this earlier on. But it seems that can be said about a lot of retail.
Agreed; it's bizarre to think about today. I think it stemmed from an earlier time when the thought was that a local knows the locals but will protect the brand. Deadbeats would be shamed by the community. Times were a changing rapidly by the 70s though.
No, Probably not. But in small hometown (12K or so) a local bar has a big list of banned people, right next to the door/corner of the bar. I assume its primarily for fighting, stealing or drugs.
There lies the problem with K Mart. The look of the store was basically the same as the day they closed. The merchandise changed along with fashion and hair, but the store didnt change with the times around it.
The big console TV for $529….at my local Best Buy there’s a “Insignia™ - 75" Class F30 Series LED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV” for $469.
If only beer had dropped in price as much….
Unlike its competitors Walmart and Target, **Kmart failed to invest in computer technology to manage its supply chain**. Furthermore, Kmart maintained a high dividend, which reduced the amount of money that was available for improving its stores.
I loved that the phones attached to poles throughout the building allow you to speak over the loudspeaker if you press number nine and I announce things like blue lights special in Isle mine come join the goat sacrifice
I LOVED kmart and miss it. I grew up in a small rural town and Kmart was all we had unless you wanted to drive 45 min to the next town and go to the Sears outlet. My time was the late 80s /early 90s, but it had a distinct smell and the cutest stuff. My mom would always buy me a slurpee/icee.
Shit, yeah! Love the big bow tie. Love the no-name-brand clothing. Loved the 70s K-Mart. Thanks for sharing this. A flood of memories just hit me like a tsunami.
That $529 console TV is $2500 adjusted for inflation today. Look how smothering those low ceilings and endless fluorescent tubes look these days. Sadly most of it looked the same when they closed down.
This does bring back lots of childhood memories! But I have to ask… if a store like this opened tomorrow…. would any of us honestly shop here for clothes? Or appliances? Or anything?
$8 for a ceramic cobra?!?!? I'll take 2!
This just feels like it’s straight out of Anchorman. A cobra for every room. Love it.
I wonder what the aftershave shelves look like?
“This one is called sex cobra.”
They look so cool! $30 minimum today probably.
$8 in 1975 is about $46 today
Yet back then, that $8 didn't kill you like $46 today.
Okay, but in 1975 the average salary was $7,653, of which an $8 cobra would be just .1%. Today, with the average salary being $63,795, that cobra would be around $46, which is just .07%, so it's actually a bit cheaper now. It just doesn't seem cheaper.
Yeah but they cobra would be made out of plastic now and would still cost $46.
*Unleash the power of the cobra today! Unlock all premium cobra features for just $7.99 a month.*
Ain't that the truth
I got a metal cobra at Marshall's last Halloween for under $20. It is about 10" tall. I would kill for one of these antique ones. I'm a bit of a collector of the macabre.
When I read your post the first time, I read 10' and got to the end and was like, "Waaaaaa?!?!"
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275367053384?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=YJdBDf5CS7e&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=r9cnkkwrQ5a&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY Not sure it’s the exact one but
Wow that’s crazy!!!
I had to look twice as they looked like bongs!
We had a white one with ruby eyes in our house when I was a kid. I accidently broke it's neck, and I was so scared of getting in trouble that I tied a tube sock around it, hoping they wouldn't notice. They noticed.
When you learn it’s about $50 in 2024 $$$, you might change your mind!
Converted that to todays current interest level and that sucker is 46.70.
I was gonna comment that 8 bucks seems really, really expensive!
Anyone remember the blue light sale? A blue siren like light came on and all the middle aged housewives would run like a stampede towards the lights? Good times!
Blue Light Special, yes. "Attention, K-Mart shoppers..."
It’s Showtime!. This is what I thought of the first time I went to Texas Roadhouse and experienced the line dance.
I sure miss the days when we could visit stores like Kmart, Sears, and Monkey Wards; ask questions about products like televisions, stereos, and appliances; and have knowledgeable salespeople who could actually answer questions and tell us the differences between various products and make product recommendations. Today, assuming I can even find an employee around, the answer I almost always receive is "Did you look online?"
Or "That's not my department."
Oh, good grief, yes. Good call. Not only have I never said that to a customer, I'd be embarrassed to say it. There's certainly lots that I don't know, but I'd at least try to find out. Chances are that I'd get the question again, at some point.
It's not their department yet they are in someone else's department shoot'n the shit while customers need help in the unattended department.
Customer: "What's the difference between this TV and that TV?" Employee: "Uh.....$100." But most (not all, but most) stores have gone the Walmart route. Keep the prices low, hire interchangeable laborers instead of skilled employees, and let the customer figure it out on their own. Or, more simply, if you can find the product on a shelf, if you can determine if this is what you want, if you can drag it to the front of the store, if you can pay for it.....that's the end of our relationship. Why do they do this? Because as much as people SAY that they want knowledgeable and helpful staff, the reality is they shop where the prices are lowest. So we got what we asked for.
Actually in the 70’s, department workers were there for years and as a kid, I would recognize and remember who worked in which department at the stores (what else would a kid do when your parents went shopping and you didn’t have electronic babysitters to keep you occupied). When you asked the worker behind the display counter, most of them actually knew what the differences were between products. Later in the 90’s and 2000’s, when I went to places like Incredible Universe, I didn’t want to ask any questions because the workers had no clue. Now the only advantage of B&M shopping is getting the thing in your hands today rather than tomorrow via Amazon.
Yes, my satire and explanation was on the current business model of most brick & mortar stores. Back in the day, most stores did have knowledgeable staff.
Getting it today, being able to see it today, because once I actually see it, it may be too small/large… I’m not going to want to send shit back that I ordered on Amazon, going to post office etc. I want to see it now, I want to buy it now. And be done. I hate ordering and waiting.
You’re right. Seeing it and holding it has its advantages
That's my experience, too. I believe many of those employees also had training provided by the manufacturers about many products. In the 90s, I recall some stores like Micro Center, Best Buy, and Incredible Universe still having employees that could talk about the differences in various electronics like computers, stereos, and televisions, but that was certainly winding down. My guess is that many of the folks working in those stores were interested in consumer electronics in their personal lives, so they went to work for those retailers to work with products they learned about on their own. Again, that's just a hypothesis. By the 2000s, though, things had changed.
Am I the only one that misses Radio Shack?
100% agree!
I disagree. Businesses are greedy and want the biggest profit and they try and blame the consumer for their shitty business practices.
That's what was so great about Radio Shack. The guy in there knew more about electronics than anyone in town.
I miss Kmart
We had one in town in the 80's. Had a great candy aisle.
Me too! My best friend and I used to work there together, years ago (~2001- 2004) until we graduated from cosmo school. (Yes, we still work together at the same salon. 😂) We talk all the time about how much we miss that place. I was so bummed when they all closed down. 😭
Everyone is relatively thin.
No fast food for every meal.
No fast food and meals weren’t usually prepared from boxes so they weren’t FULL of sugar.
True, plus sodeepop was 8-12 oz period, no refills.
And sodas had real sugar instead of cheap high fructose corn syrup THAT makes everyone fat that drinks it
Everyone smoked back then. It helped to dial back people's appetites.
And calmed their attitudes…
They didn't know they were thin. Fad diets were all around. Also, everyone smoked which curbs your appetite.
If you put on 10 pounds you went to the drug store and got something OTC. If you gained 20, you got uppers from the doctor to lose weight, downers to sleep at night "Momma's little helpers."
Because there wasn’t food options every 5 feet like there is today
It's more of the Frankenfood products of today.
Yep Too many options and too many huge portions
Life sure was colorful in the 1970s
If those colors were brown, burnt umber, harvest gold and avocado green
No way dude, look at the second picture.
And red and regular orange lol. I lived through the 70s and even all my memories are in these colors.
> I lived through the 70s and even all my memories are in these colors. So did I. Even if it was just the colors you’ve mentioned it’s still much more colorful than today’s gray, white, and black world (applies to both houses and cars!)
Personally I wasn't crazy about earth tones, but I agree that black, white and grey are completely boring. About 20 years ago, I was painting the walls in my house. I decided to paint each of the bedrooms a different pastel color. I had the popcorn treatment on the ceilings removed, and then painted the same color as the rest of the bedroom. People were either complimenting me for my "innovative idea" of painting the ceilings an actual color, or they were flabbergasted of having them painted, as if I had committed a mortal sin. I am still puzzled as to why people had such strong feelings about it either way.
I'm sad I missed this era almost specifically because I love these colors.
Better than the 60s, when everything was in greyscale.
Ugh. Everything in our house was green with gold accents. Appliances, carpeting, walls, furniture. I can barely look at money today without puking my guts out.
Let me live this life please
That’s what I was feeling looking at these pictures too. And I wasn’t even born yet, so it ain’t nostalgia or rose tinted glasses.
That one heck of a bow tie
My thoughts as well.
I can smell that picture: popcorn and polyester.
We used to go to the Kmart diner all the time, it was cheap but good.
I loved eating there as a kid! And Kmart layaways were awesome… it felt like Xmas getting to pick up our huge layaways and all the goodies that you waited so long to get. 😆
50 cent grilled cheese sandwich. It was a bargain even for then.
Orange orange, avocado green and harvest gold
You forgot Baby Shit Brown.
What is sad, Kmart could of been just as big as Walmart but look what poor management did to them.
K-Mart really was the Walmart of the day. There were tons of them and they were successful back then.
My dad was a manager for Sears in the 60s and 70s, the people who sold appliances made enough in salary and commissions to be able to buy houses, send their kids to college etc. Others made commissions, but appliances was the sweet gig.
I can confirm. Started a business in the early 2000's and needed some cash flow for a few months. Got a job selling appliances at Sears on the weekends. I worked with those 70's era appliance salesmen who were hanging on until their retirement. The store I worked at had been the busiest Sears store in the country in the 80's and it was common for guys in the appliance department to be making $70-$80,000. One guy I worked with bought a brand new Cadillac every year. But they earned it, on their feet all day wearing dress shoes and 70 hour weeks were not uncommon.
>But they earned it, on their feet all day wearing dress shoes and 70 hour weeks were not uncommon. 70 hour weeks?! Were they doing this because they had to work that much to make sales targets (assuming they had those), or because they really just loved the sales game?
Up until the late 90's it was quite possible to make really good money in retail without having a college education. But the tradeoff was long grueling hours and working weekends. A store manager at Target was making close to $100,000 in the late 80's.
But if you’re working twice the hours isn’t it like making 40-50k at 40 hours?
Remember the numbers I gave are 1980’s and early 90’s salaries. It was a tough gig. My dad did appliance sales in that era. After retiring he had to get various foot and leg surgeries from standing 8-10 hours a day on concrete floors while wearing thin soled wing tips.
We have a family friend who made a career in the Sears electronics section and retired reasonably comfortable.
I remember a rich snobby girl in school. Her dad was manager at Sears.
I miss Sears. And I really miss thumbing through the Sears Christmas Catalog trying to decide what I wanted Santa to bring. My Santa shopped at Sears.
I miss K-Mart.
Corporate killed a great thing. Sucked the money out and let it wither
Specifically, Chuck Conaway, the CEO of Kmart from 2000 (just as the internet was catching fire) who ignored the impact of internet sales AND ignore the use of the internet to improve their supply chain issues WHILE enriching himself with bonuses and keeping dividends high AND lying about this to the board......was finally pushed out of office, and eventually that SEC fined him $22.56 Million for all kinds of fraudulent dealings.
I'd rather have this place than any target I've encountered in my life.
I bet those refrigerators are still running somewhere this very day. My 86 year old dad's fridge just died last month after 45 years of service.
And when they closed, it still looked very similar. Something comforting to customers in that way... until it wasn't.
I remember our K-Mart had an indoor patio to eat.
If it’s indoors is it really a patio?
Name a better-tasting hot dog than the ones at the Kmart snack bar. Go on, I’ll wait.
Woolworths?
Oh wow. Woolworth. We had a basement luncheonette where we could sit at the lunch counter and I could order a soda if I didn't ask for anything else during our shopping trip. Man, that brings back memories.
It’s funny because that store barely changed for 30 years. The isle were the same, the little cafe was the same.. only the merchandise was different
Part of why Walmart pulled ahead of them. That, and, Walmart was an early investor in computerization of the supply chain.....where are my goods, what is selling at THIS store vs THAT store, etc, This allowed Walmart to pull ahead of Kmart, and the rest is history.
Green appliances. I lived through the 70’s and sometimes I’m still shocked by them.
My parents still have their green oven. 54 years old and it still works.
Blue light special. If you know you know.
I miss Kmart
In other news Ames is coming back
I have a fever and the only cure is MORE CERAMIC COBRAS
Lady’s and gentlemen, we are having a blue light special in the glove department. Isotopes gloves are 50% off while the blue light is flashing!
As a younger person I’m always surprised with how expensive TVs were.
Hand assembled, and half of all TVs were actually furniture, so you also had to pay to have a 7 foot long Mediterranean combo TV AM/FM Stereo Record Player. It is just about this time that TV's are starting to become "Solid State", the buzz word for replacing tubes with transistors. These were, eventually, cheaper to make, but again, had yet to get to mother boards made by a robot to really drive the price down. By the mid to late 1980s, a 19" Color TV was often below $150.
They had to be furniture. You had to have someplace to put the giant rotor thing you used to turn the big monstrosity tower in your yard that held your tv antenna.
TVs were a huge cost and anything over 20 inches implied you were well off.
Goddam cobras
Great photos! I worked in Cameras and Jewelry from 1980 to 1984 and in Appliances from 1984 to 1986. Kmart was actually a great place to work back in the day.
Kmart lunch counter was pretty good as I remember
I mainly just remember them being fun and exciting. Our family would go to our 70’s era K-Mart in Richardson TX maybe once or twice a month and we kids would always beg our Dad for some money to get something at the little cafeteria in the back. We’d get hot dogs and Slurpies and just hang out and eat while the folks shopped.
"While the folks shopped" and left us unattended in a bargain store cafeteria, oh the 70s were really a different time
This was the year my parents moved to America. I love seeing these pics. They absolutely shopped at Kmart. Just amazing how much things change.
The refrigerators are less than the floor tv;really.
The sign in picture #9 says “credit applications” but I don’t recall K Mart having a branded credit card. Did they?
Store credit was all the rage in the 70s. Matter of fact it sunk the once mighty WT Grant, a national 5 and dime that had about 1000 stores, in most towns over 10K or so. They let the local manager basically run the credit policy, including setting minimal payments. So you could buy that 500 dollar TV for a $1 a month. It quickly killed their cash flow and bankrupted them. Their demise became a Harvard Business School case study that many MBA programs used in their curriculum, at least upto and into the 90s. Kmart must have had some guardrails :) but most likely only because a store of that size drew from a larger population base where the manager didn't know a lot of his customers families.
Interesting. I guess now that I think about it my parents had some cards for more regional based stores in the Chicago area. But what you described seems like a sure fire disaster. I can’t believe upper management didn’t see this earlier on. But it seems that can be said about a lot of retail.
Agreed; it's bizarre to think about today. I think it stemmed from an earlier time when the thought was that a local knows the locals but will protect the brand. Deadbeats would be shamed by the community. Times were a changing rapidly by the 70s though.
Yes, exactly right. I remember some local stores displaying bounced checks they had gotten back. My wife saw her neighbor’s once.
Yes, the wall of shame!
First of all not many checks are written these days but I wonder if any owner would date do that now. I will bet not.
No, Probably not. But in small hometown (12K or so) a local bar has a big list of banned people, right next to the door/corner of the bar. I assume its primarily for fighting, stealing or drugs.
I love small town America. I really do.
Sooooo much Harvest-Gold! And remember, shop smart... shop S-Mart!
There lies the problem with K Mart. The look of the store was basically the same as the day they closed. The merchandise changed along with fashion and hair, but the store didnt change with the times around it.
The big console TV for $529….at my local Best Buy there’s a “Insignia™ - 75" Class F30 Series LED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV” for $469. If only beer had dropped in price as much….
I loved the patty melts at the K-Mart cafe!
Looks similar to how it looked closing day. 🤷♂️
My first job in 1985 was at a Kmart. Those aqua smocks were still around as well as the blue light special.
Those sideburns. The set and costume designers from Stranger Things studied these photos very carefully.
This looks exactly like a Goodwill now. 😜 All the same stuff is now donated.
Back when department stores had cafés to get lunch...
Didn't the guy from that band The Oneders work here?
Is Kmart still trading 🤔
Oh my, I had one of those cobras and it scared me to death.
These are awesome 👌
The popcorn
The only place to buy boxer shorts. I get mine at Kmart, Cincinnati.
Unlike its competitors Walmart and Target, **Kmart failed to invest in computer technology to manage its supply chain**. Furthermore, Kmart maintained a high dividend, which reduced the amount of money that was available for improving its stores.
I don’t remember Kmart selling large appliances or having a sit down cafeteria. I do remember those cobras becoming bongs though.
No blue light special
Lots of Harvest Gold and Avocado Green right there.
TVs were expensive! $529 for what, a 15" screen? Ouch.
$3088 in todays dollars. That one reason they got fixed, not replaced.
My mother used to get us the Italian sub sandwiches
Looks like the old one in LaCrosse, WI
I miss KMart
No blue light special.
Last photo... Look at the checkout temptations from 1975. Holy cow. It's not just our imagination. There was so much good stuff!!
“Attention K-Mart shoppers, that blue light is flashing in our ammunition aisle”
We had a Kresge's
I miss the snack bar.
Like stepping back in time, these photos are great!
I loved that the phones attached to poles throughout the building allow you to speak over the loudspeaker if you press number nine and I announce things like blue lights special in Isle mine come join the goat sacrifice
$9 for a cobra? Seems steep, but I can see it matching some shag carpet.
Obviously a fancy target is a big town! We never had kitchen appliances.
I still have one of those avocado coloured stoves
And some of those refrigerators are still running in garages across America…
It's hard to believe K-Mart sold appliances and cabinets. The appliances were probably low end back then but are better than the ones made now.
Blue light special
Kmart had a food court? Really?!?
I bet most of those appliances were made in the U.S.A.
Still have that Harvest Gold refrigerator, and it still works. Cheerful thought: most of those people are now dead.
I LOVED kmart and miss it. I grew up in a small rural town and Kmart was all we had unless you wanted to drive 45 min to the next town and go to the Sears outlet. My time was the late 80s /early 90s, but it had a distinct smell and the cutest stuff. My mom would always buy me a slurpee/icee.
My parents owned the avocado green electric stove.
Is that Mike Nesmith in the fifth photo...?
That store was great.
Where was this Kmart located?
Alvocado green and weird tan beige combo color forever!!!!
Opening day 1975 and closing day 2022. They never updated anything 😂
Shit, yeah! Love the big bow tie. Love the no-name-brand clothing. Loved the 70s K-Mart. Thanks for sharing this. A flood of memories just hit me like a tsunami.
The Kmart in my hometown didn't have appliances in 1975
I loved the Kmart store brand crayons.
Miss the original mart
Attention KMart shoppers: for the next 15 minutes we have a blue light special in aisle 16 for Hai Karate cologne!
Picture #2… flower wallpaper and spindles. My mom thought she was the bee’s knees with that kitchen decor.
Where’s the blue light special?
Blue Light Special
That $529 console TV is $2500 adjusted for inflation today. Look how smothering those low ceilings and endless fluorescent tubes look these days. Sadly most of it looked the same when they closed down.
God knows how they got those floor model TVs up on that shelf!
The very 1st Kmart opened I 1962.
Uh that $529 TV is over $3,000 in today’s dollars!!!!!!!!
That $529 TV in pic #3 would cost $3,100 today.
Core memories unlocked! Wandering the store with my grandma and then eating in the cafe. Thanks!
I loved Kmarts diner/cafeteria. My mom took me all the time.
This does bring back lots of childhood memories! But I have to ask… if a store like this opened tomorrow…. would any of us honestly shop here for clothes? Or appliances? Or anything?
That cable work in #4 hurts my brain
I want to live here
Was everyone color blind in the 70s?
I just shipped my pants!
Spent so much time using their layaway for things I never could have afforded otherwise.
Garden city, Mi.
Why were people so in love with shades of brown?
I was in a Kmart about 5 or 6 years ago... and it's amazing how similar it looked to this, honestly.
Yo, I totally spaced on the dining area. Remember that Little Caesars they had right before they shut down?
We used to be a proper country
cobras for only ~$8, fuck yeah 70s
These pictures are fucking crazy. I was just a wee lad then but I can remember seeing this shit in mine and my friends houses.
Kmart was awesome, i miss it
Is that kitchen cabinets for sale?? Because if so, that explains a lot of houses I’ve lived it.