80s culture · 80s fashion · 80s malls · 80s nostalgia · retro ·Oct 26, 2026

80s Mall Stores That Don't Exist Anymore (and a Few That Somehow Do)

by Newretro.Net

In late 1981 Universal needed a mall for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, so the crew filmed after hours at the Sherman Oaks Galleria in the San Fernando Valley, a mall that had opened about a year earlier. The Galleria also got name-checked in Frank and Moon Zappa's "Valley Girl" in 1982. By April 1999 the original indoor mall had closed, and it came back in 2002 as an open-air center. Most of the stores below got the first half of that story and skipped the comeback.

If you were a teenager in the 80s, the mall was where you went when there was nowhere else to go. Most of what was inside it is gone now. A few stores are still open.

Where guys bought clothes

Chess King. The first one opened in March 1968 in the Dedham Mall in Massachusetts. The idea came from salespeople at Thom McAn, the shoe chain owned by the same parent company, who saw an opening in clothes and shoes for young guys. In 1970 the New York Times described the stores as bold apparel shops for boys aged 12 to 20. There were over 500 Chess Kings by 1984. Merry-Go-Round bought the chain in 1993, and it closed in November 1995.

Merry-Go-Round. Founded by Leonard "Boogie" Weinglass and Harold Goldsmith, it chased every fad as fast as it could get it onto a hanger, and peaked at just over 500 stores under its own name. Its mid-80s TV ads had teens walking down a hallway lined with giant speakers. The company filed for bankruptcy in January 1994 and was liquidated in 1996.

Oaktree. The trendier men's chain, owned by Edison Brothers Stores from the late 70s. Edison Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 1995 and again in 1999, and Oaktree went with it.

A lot of what we sell is what Chess King would have sold if it had lasted another 30 years: printed shirts like the Retrowave Shirt 1985 ($39.99) and jackets that shine a little under store lights.

Illustration of a young man trying on a shiny jacket in front of a mirror in a small menswear shop

Where the music was

Sam Goody. Sam "Goody" Gutowitz started it in New York in 1951, and Musicland bought it in 1978 and put the Sam Goody name on most of its stores. After a long run of sales and bankruptcies, Trans World Entertainment bought the leftovers in 2006 and turned most of them into f.y.e. One Sam Goody was reportedly still open in Medford, Oregon as of 2025.

Camelot Music. The first store opened in North Canton, Ohio in 1965. The chain had 360 stores by 1993, went through bankruptcy in 1996, and was bought by Trans World in 1998, which eventually folded it into f.y.e. too.

Record Town and Tape World. Trans World's own mall chains, starting with Record Town in 1973. Both names disappeared into f.y.e.

Illustration of a teenager with headphones around his neck flipping through cassette tapes in a record store

Books, games and gadgets

Waldenbooks. Kmart bought it in 1984, when it was the biggest bookstore chain in the country. It later became part of Borders, and when Borders liquidated in July 2011, the last Waldenbooks went with it.

B. Dalton. Founded in 1966 by Bruce Dayton of the Dayton's department store family, with one letter changed. It peaked at about 800 stores in 1986, sold to Barnes and Noble in 1987, and closed its last regular stores between 2010 and 2013. B. Dalton also started Software Etc. in 1985 and sponsored Reading Rainbow from 1985 to 1987.

Babbage's and Software Etc. Babbage's was founded in Dallas in 1984 by two Harvard Business School classmates and named after Charles Babbage, the computer pioneer. The two chains merged in 1994, went bankrupt in 1996, and were bought by an investor group led by Leonard Riggio. The GameStop brand came out of that in 1999. So GameStop started as a computer store in a Dallas mall.

Electronics Boutique. Founded in Philadelphia in 1977, selling calculators, radios and digital watches before it moved into computers and games. GameStop bought it in 2005 and dropped the name in the US.

KB Toys. Started as a candy wholesaler in 1922, became Kay-Bee Toy and Hobby in 1973, and by the end of 1985 was the largest mall toy retailer in the country. It filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and again in 2008 and closed for good in February 2009. Plenty of lists say KB went under in 2017. That was Toys R Us.

RadioShack. Not a mall-only chain, but it was in a lot of them. More than 4,300 company stores by 1982. Bankruptcies in 2015 and 2017. It still exists as a brand online and through independent dealers, which is more than most of this list can say.

Movies, shoes and everything else

Suncoast Motion Picture Company. The first store opened in 1986 in Roseville, Minnesota, first under the Paramount name, and became Suncoast in 1988. It sold VHS tapes and movie posters to people who wanted to own a movie instead of renting it. As of 2025 only two were left. If you miss the VHS aisle, our VHS T-120 Sneakers 1988 ($109.99) have the tape label on the side.

Kinney Shoes. Founded in 1894, owned by Woolworth from 1963. In 1974 Kinney opened an athletic shoe store in a California mall and called it Foot Locker. Kinney closed all its stores in 1998. Foot Locker is still here.

Thom McAn. The shoe chain that gave the world Chess King. It was down to 730 stores by 1992 and closed the rest in 1996.

Contempo Casuals. The young women's chain from 1962. Wet Seal bought it in 1995 and dropped the name in 2001, and Wet Seal itself closed its stores in 2017.

Lechters. Kitchen gadgets, in a mall, for some reason. It had 490 stores in 2000 and was liquidated in 2001.

Glamour Shots. Opened in Dallas in 1988. Big hair, soft focus, a denim jacket with the collar up. It peaked at 380 studios in 1995, and very few are left.

Things Remembered. Engraved gifts for people you didn't know well. The stores closed after a 2022 announcement, and the name lives on online.

Still here, somehow

Spencer Gifts has about 600 mall stores, and its parent company also owns Spirit Halloween. Orange Julius mostly lives on as a menu item inside Dairy Queen. Sbarro went through two bankruptcies and is smaller, but it's still out there. Piercing Pagoda is still piercing ears under a slightly longer name. And Hot Topic opened in November 1989, which makes it a 90s store that sneaked onto every 80s list.

How many malls are left?

There's no reliable count of how many enclosed malls existed at a single 1980s peak, and a lot of the numbers floating around online have no source. The best figures come from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond: about 1,500 enclosed malls were built in the US between 1956, when the first one opened in Edina, Minnesota, and 2005. About 1,150 were left in 2022. The stores went first. A lot of the buildings are still standing.

For more on why the mall felt like the center of the universe, read the cultural power of malls in the 80s and why malls felt like entire worlds.

Questions we get

What mall stores from the 80s don't exist anymore? Chess King, Merry-Go-Round, Oaktree, Camelot Music, Record Town, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, KB Toys, Babbage's, Software Etc., Kinney Shoes, Thom McAn, Contempo Casuals and Lechters are all gone. Sam Goody and Suncoast are down to a store or two.

What happened to Chess King? Merry-Go-Round bought it in 1993, filed for bankruptcy in 1994, and closed the Chess King chain in November 1995.

Did Babbage's become GameStop? Sort of. Babbage's merged with Software Etc. in 1994, the combined company went bankrupt in 1996, and the new owners launched the GameStop brand in 1999.

Is Sam Goody still open? One store was reportedly still open in Medford, Oregon as of 2025. The rest became f.y.e. stores or closed.

Where was Fast Times at Ridgemont High filmed? The mall scenes were shot at the Sherman Oaks Galleria in Los Angeles, after hours. The original indoor mall closed in 1999 and was rebuilt as an open-air center.

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What Chess King would sell now