Spencer Gifts? What did you buy / shoplift when you were kid?

I used to love the room in the back with the blacklight posters, but the only thing I remember buying was the flavored lip balm that was always right next to the cashier.

OP is a childhood Grifter.

Lamps of course, that's what they were know for.

Plasma Lamp

Spent many minutes pawing through their greeting cards, ogling the ones featuring shirtless men.

Never bought any of them of course.

Next stop, the poster rack featuring the Dukes of Hazzard.

Moline, Illinois’ Southpark Mall. I wonder if the 1982 calendar selection at Waldenbooks is worth checking out?

Fiber Optic Lamps

R1 When I was 14, my dream job was to be a cashier at Spencer Gifts. Then I 'grew up' , attended a liberal arts college (which I loved!), graduated with a degree that offered no jobs, and was able to live my dream of being a cashier at Spencer Gifts. Best years of my life!

I bought a lot of the gag-type items from the backs of comic books instead of from Spencer Gifts, and then I started getting a catalog called “Things You Never Knew Existed (Bit Couldn’t Possibly Live Without).”

But in the late 90s, there was a short-lived 60skitaxh renaissance, and my parents let me outfit their basement in stuff and I think most of it came from Spencer Gifts and Tower Records. I put up a motorized mirror ball hung from the drop ceiling tiles, with pin lights that had colored lenses. On the walls were blacklight-responsive psychedelic Volkswagen bus/beetle and happy face posters, and I got an inflatable magenta chair that was actually very comfortable but I didn’t sit in a lot because it was squeaky.

R8 I wish I could have visited with you in your basement! We would have squeaked that inflatable chair so hard your parents could hear.

I bought their zip popper through their mail-order catalogue, amongst other useless plastic crap. I ate that shit up.

R9 When I moved to my first apartment, my roommate and I had no living room furniture and so I provided my inflatable chair and foot stool and she bought a $199 sofa from Ikea. The sofa was rickety and uncomfortable and so she mostly sat in the chair or else we both sat on the floor most of the time. The squeaking was really annoying! But the chair served us well as actual furniture for two years.

R8 You bought stuff from the backs of comic books -- I wonder if it was the same stuff I bought from Bazooka Joe comics??

Thanks for the link but I'm sorry that company went out of business. I wonder why? It looked like it really filled a need!

R10 What's a zip popper?

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Pet Horny Toad yet:

Or the Around the World in Bed board game:

R14 I remember! And how great that you still have one -- or at least could provide us with a picture. Priceless!

I learned that there was such a thing as Edible Underwear at the tender age of 12 when I accidentally wandered into a Spencer’s Gift shop at our local mall

[R15] Omg, shocked me as a kid that a board game could be so unlike "Monopoly," until Spencer started selling "Hop, Skip, and Hump."

Anything Kiss related.

Sea Monkeys! Which turned out to be a complete ripoff—just brine shrimp

I remember when the front wall nearest the entrance was covered in FRANKIE SAY RELAX shirts. *sigh*

Fart in a can.

They're usually the only legacy store left in most malls. They've always appealed to 14 year old boys and smart enough not to change their business model.

They exist but are a shadow of their former selves

At my local mall in Ohio in the 80s, Spencer Gifts (we just called it "Spencer's") would limit the number of unaccompanied teens in the store at a time which only made me determined to get in there. And then once I got in there I just looked at the posters and the overpriced light-up crap. I've probably been in that store 100 times in my life and never bought a damn thing.

R6!!! Yes, I was totally going to mention these. My aunt & uncle gave me one as a gift. So groovy.

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