Remember the Sears Electronic Showplace?

I do enjoy shopping online, but when I was a kid, stores like Sears and Kmart were my family’s one-stop-shop for everything. I especially love Sears, where while my Mother did her shopping I could hang out in the electronics sections and play with TV, stereos, and other electronic components for hours. Not only that, but I was especially infatuated with very small and very large televisions and would spend an equal amount of time staring at each — Dreaming of a day when I would own these amazing bits of technology.

At the Sears at a mall we frequented, a Sears my Mom called “the nice Sears”, they had set up a couch in front of a wall of TVs, and they would always have a popular movie playing on them. This was heaven! I think during one long day at the mall, I got through nearly two entire viewings of Raiders of the Lost Ark without leaving that couch.

I have seen a lot of stores offering daycare for kids, with fancy toys and ball pits. This seems like a waste of resources for these places. If you really want to take care of a lot of kids at once, just buy a few TVs and some comfortable sofas and let the electronic babysitter do all the work.