The sad news that the two very last Zellers stores in our country are closing at the end of the month really took me on a trip down memory lane. The last two Zellers are in Ottawa and Etobicoke just on the outskirts of Toronto.
My fondest memories of Zellers involve their mascot Zeddy, the Club Zed card and the Skillet restaurant. Today’s loyalty brand cards could learn a lot from Club Zed, because when it started out the points were numerous and the prices in points of the merchandise you could buy were more than fair.
The restaurant in each Zellers location had good, cheap food and often a real homemade tasting special on the menu every day!
I also have Christmas memories of both Simpsons-Sears and Zellers. One year I found myself Christmas Eve in a Zellers doing all my last minute Christmas shopping. When I hit the toy department, it was so near to closing that the employees had already marked down all the merchandise with stickers for the big Boxing Day sale. Let’s just say the kids cleaned up that year with presents.
And as a kid myself I always remembered the long trip from the outskirts of Dartmouth to the Simpsons Sears store in Halifax on Mumford road. It seemed like we were driving forever but it was worth the time spent getting there because the Christmas displays and the range of toys were out of this world.
Other stores I miss – every music store that sold records, then cassettes and then cd’s. I could get lost in one for hours.
Blockbuster Video on Saturday afternoons with friends and family discussing movies and making that big decision as to what we were watching that night.
And finally, I miss the It Store in the Mic Mac Mall – their novelty gifts and toys were the most unique and all under one roof. (By the way, there’s a store in Mahone Bay that carries a lot of the classic toys that were big at the It Store back in the day.
Got any Zellers, Sears or other store memories and would you love to see those stores come back?
