this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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No shit. There was briefly an electronics store in the 90s where literally everything was priced low, but it was allllll locked up, either behind glass or held to the countertop with a security wire. I can't even remember the name of it. It was like grand opening, grand closing.
The wiz?
Huh. I guess somebody did beat the wiz.
Oh jeez hahaha
Man this might have been it. It fits with the time, and I remember the place having a red trade dress. I looked at some pictures of The Wiz but it didn't strike me as I remember this place, with like everything being under lock and key. Google searches didn't help.
Circuit City?
Same thing. Fits with the time and red motif, but I can't seem to recall them locking everything up.
It's funny because I know exactly where the place was.
The original building became several other stores when was eventually torn down and became a Best Buy.
Right across the street, there was a Circuit City, which is also no longer there. Once that closed, it became another electronic store, which I'm pretty sure simply bought out the inventory and all the displays and fixtures from Circuit City and just kept it open under an independent name. Before that building was a Circuit City, it was yet another electronics store.
So I'm talking about five total electronic stores, right across the street from one another.
The original one, that later became a Best Buy. And across the street, the original one (which I think maybe was the Wiz), which became a Circuit City, and then became something else.
The original place I was talking about that locked everything up, I seem to recall having a name, something to do with cheap prices or bargains or something, not necessarily the word, cheap or bargain, but something implying as much, kind of like how Best Buy implies low pricing.
If anyone wants to dig in further, this was on the famed Berlin turnpike in Connecticut.
Edit : While writing this, I did another search and came up with it possibly being "Service Merchandise," which had a catalogue showroom approach to retail, and tons of glass-case counters, and had the red motif in the 1990s. Found a post on a vB forum saying this was in the location of the Best Buy, so I'm thinking this was it. I went there to buy a Nintendo Virtual Boy, which seemed so cool in advertisements, but was a pretty big migraine inducing let down (not unlike today's stereoscopic gaming systems).
De Kijkshop