Get your Club Z points ready

March 23, 2023 7:29 AM

Zellers returns to Canada. (sort of.) Is nostalgia to blame? asks The Walrus, where anyone who follows Brittlestar knows the answer is definitely yes (and be careful, this tune is catchy). (link to YouTube)

Food trucks are substituting for the (in)famous Zellers restaurant, where you got fries after buying your Trapper Keeper. The Daily Hive reviews the offerings.

Any discussion of Zellers is incomplete without a look at why Target failed even as it took Zellers down.

And finally, no mention of Zellers can be complete without mentioning that it is a child of the Hudson's Bay Company, a most colonial institution even among colonial institutions. Nostalgia is a tricky deal in Canada.

posted by warriorqueen (63 comments total)

Zellers was gross. Like a down-market K-mart. That had no idea what market it was trying to serve. Closest approximation is Montgomery Wards during the last year before their bankruptcy. Just an appallingly bleak mercantile wasteland full of products no one cared about at prices no one would pay even if they wanted it. Oh, wait, I'm thinking of Winners. No, no, Winners is where the shit Zellers couldn't sell went to die, so the loss of Zellers meant that Winners got it two years sooner. The Bay is the excat same thing except trying to market to people who wouldn't be caught dead in a Zellers parking lot, much less the store. Jesus. Has Canadian retail always been such a hellscape? Signs point to yes.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:36 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Make no mistake I shopped at Zellers, before there was an Amazon. It's where you went for linens because Canadian Tire didn't carry linens.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:40 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

"There was a sense of jubilation among the nostalgic on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media channels."

Was there? This wasn't my sense at all. I only saw questioning as to why it was coming back. I'm having a hard time buying the fundamental premise here. I don't know of anyone who actually missed Zellers.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:41 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Food trucks are substituting for the (in)famous Zellers restaurant

Even when Zellers was around, I was astounded by the fact they had restaurants, and I can't believe anyone misses those enough for there to be even a weak attempt to bring them back.
posted by nubs at 7:43 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I only lived in Canada for a couple years (2001-2003), but I remember Zellers…specifically a Zellers in Taber, Alberta. That’s where I lived at the time, and Zeller’s was one of an only a handful of stores in Taber proper. You had to drive 45 min to Lethbridge if you wanted more diverse shopping choices.

So yeah, I shopped at Zellers too, mostly for lack of other options and/or laziness. But it kinda always sucked. In my mind it was “Shitty Shopko”, but “Downmarket Kmart” is also a good descriptor.

(Canadian Tire was infinitely better. Ah! I still wish the US had something like Canadian Tire. Like combine an Ace Hardware with a Five Below, or something? But I digress)
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:53 AM on March 23, 2023

I am nostalgic for Sears pre 1990 or so. That was a store.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:54 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I miss Zellers, but more because it was replaced by empty storefronts or Walmart than for Zellers in particular (I'm ignoring the blink-and-you missed it Target stores -- they were half empty, overpriced, and sucked enough to make me miss the grunge and disorder of Zellers). When there was a wide range of department stores, it was a shit place to go, but by the end it was one of the few survivors. I shopped a lot at Zellers because it was convenient and in walking distance. I hate shopping at Walmart, which replaced the Zellers near my house. Fortunately, there is still a Canadian Tire in walking distance, and one of the old small ones, not one of the new giant wastelands.

I did enjoy eating at the Zellers restaurant. Decent and cheap diner food. Nothing fancy.

I do miss decent department stores and don't like that they have been replaced with endless strip malls of big box stores.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:03 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm a Walrus subscriber, and they've really been forcing this whole 'Zellers nostalgia' thing over the past month or so. I'm with Capt. Renault—so far, the only source of any warm fuzzies concerning the return of this extinct retail outlet has been The Walrus. I've never even heard anyone else talk about Zellers, let alone pine for it.
posted by jordantwodelta at 8:03 AM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

Has Canadian retail always been such a hellscape? Signs point to yes.

Unambiguously yes. If you can't out-compete the famously-mismanaged Crappy Tire, you've got nothing.

And yes, Zellers was always awful.
posted by mhoye at 8:09 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I do have Zellers nostalgia (and I've Tweeted about it, so I am I guess in that group).

I went there a lot as a kid with my mum for back-to-school shopping and the annual treat trip to the restaurant (Shoppers World Danforth in Toronto shoutout!) I bought my first bra there, man.

I took my eldest son to the restaurant when he was a toddler to teach him how to eat in restaurants. It was very low-stakes and we kind of made friends with some older people who hung out there.

I also used to take American relatives and friends either there or to The Bay to show them Canadian customer service (surly or fleeing the customer, hands off) at its finest and they never disappointed me. And the shelves were full, unlike Target, which was a wasteland.

However I will say a trip to Canadian Tire is also pretty great.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:10 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Zellers was gross. Like a down-market K-mart.

After the Dylex bankruptcy, Zellers stepped hard into the space.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:11 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I also used to take American relatives and friends either there or to The Bay to show them Canadian customer service (surly or fleeing the customer, hands off) at its finest and they never disappointed me.

Heh. As a friend of mine once remarked, "If you want to be left completely alone, attempt to try on some shoes at the Bay in downtown Toronto."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:13 AM on March 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

Zellers was gross. Like a down-market K-mart.

I mean, Giant Tiger sort of occupies this category now. But yes, I recall Zeller's towards the tail end of its life and it was pretty sad walking into their stores. I mostly hung out in the electronics isle b/c for a long time (at least in the smaller towns I lived), it was the only place to get a CD/DVD. But Amazon sort of swooped in and I'm not sure if this will work again. Target already tried in Canada and pulled out after a few years. I fear this won't end well and will likely fizzle out just like it did before.
posted by Fizz at 8:21 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Zellers was gross. Like a down-market K-mart."

"I mean, Giant Tiger sort of occupies this category now."

Dollarama too, in that it seems like everything should be cheap, but may not actually be cheap.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:27 AM on March 23, 2023

I don't think this venture is going to go well because they're missing the point of Zellers, which was the location -- in the right neighbourhoods, not where The Bay is -- and that you can go there and kind of do/buy everything basic and bribe your kids/grandmother with a snack or a ride on the mini ferris wheel thing. Sticking popups in The Bay is a stunt - unless they're going to take The Bay downmarket, which I also think won't work but I think they're in trouble.*

Target would potentially have made it if they hadn't made bad timing, real estate, and software decisions that completely killed their supply chain.

* Despite my nostalgia and love of Canadian businesses, it might be well time for it.
posted by warriorqueen at 8:31 AM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm an unabashed supporter of Dollarama as a place with non-shit stuff at reasonable prices, filling a niche that corner stores steadfastly refused to fill for decades. Who among us hasn't walked into the local depanneur looking for a pack of e.g. AAA batteries and all they had was an extremely dusty set of 4 for $6.99 that have long since expired the 10 years since their manufacture date. I'm all for mom & pop businesses but come the fuck on. I am a little mad that Dollarama is now taking shelf bribes to get rid of the cheap-but-effective house brand cleaning products. That pisses me off.

(For our US readers, Dollarama is a store that sells non-dusty things and shelf-stable foods up to $5 max price and is reasonably well run, well stocked, clean, and has adequate staff, so it is almost, but not entirely, unlike Dollar Tree.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:37 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

The link above on why Target failed in Canada is very interesting. My goodness it was doomed! I shopped at Zellers regularly when I had a little baby and the store was a five minute walk from my house. All the baby supplies I needed and cheap prices.
Warriorqueen, the two times I was in a Canadian Target store it was at Shopper's World. (And then it was gone!)
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 8:42 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

That's the Target I tried too! Nice to know we're sort-of neighbours (although that's my parents' 'hood, I live further east.)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:58 AM on March 23, 2023

I, too, miss the Shopper's World Zellers. It was handy in my 20s and 30s, and it had a decent selection of stuff at decent prices.

Perhaps I have a rosy view of the store because growing up we'd more likely go to Bi-Way, an excellent example of the Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness (I once bought $10 shoes there that lasted precisely one week).
posted by giltay at 9:03 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yay team Shoppers World. And boy, thinking about that Bi-Way brings back memories...even back pre-Zellers when there was an Eaton's there.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:06 AM on March 23, 2023

My partner waxes very nostalgically about Eaton's, which sadly predates my Canadian presence.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:08 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have been inundated with Zeller's nostalgia in my part of Ontario and I am like, "Uh...sure?" I went to Zeller's precisely once when it was still around and was living in Sherbrooke, QC. It just reminded me of K-Mart but in a sad way. So I guess yay for all the Zeller's fans?
posted by Kitteh at 9:22 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Definitely give the Target Canada article a read, it's really insightful and points to potential pitfalls for Zellers (but also potential reasons why it might do better). The location aspect might kill this chain dead; Target mostly vacuumed up second and third-rate locations, including some that were probably vacated by Zellers and other downmarket department stores, and that didn't seem to work out for them very well.

Re: Zellers nostalgia. The Walrus I think does love to blow certain things out of proportion, but I don't think the nostalgia comes from nothing. Zellers was a big part of the chunk of childhood I spent in malls; I think it took over the old Woolco location my parents used to drag me to all the time, one of the few places I've seen a movator. Yeah, they were never the best department store or anything, but do you people not remember what Biways looked like? And people have nostalgia for that too. (Hell, I'm one of them!)

I don't know that any of this is enough to get me to actually visit a Zellers, but I wouldn't pass by one if I were already in the area. What's 15 minutes of my time to gawk at the new old thing and remark about how it's a shell of its former self?
posted by chrominance at 9:35 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I found Zellers individual stores to be highly variable. Some of them were as seanmpuckett describes, garbage piles slightly organised into aisles but some were not bad, comparable to a decent sized Winners. The worst of them were these Zellers discount stores, I forget what they were called, but they were basically where all the product that didn't sell in the full stores went to spend its final days before the landfill. The last one I saw I think was in Bracebridge and it was basically dust and metal racks covered in random stuff totally unorganised.

Food trucks are substituting for the (in)famous Zellers restaurant

If only. You know who went to these? Seniors. Where do they go instead? Tims and, if they are still lucky to have them, regional coffee shops that serve food. Now this will be perhaps weird for younger Canadians to imagine but... once upon a time not every town had a dozen Tim Horton's but the crappy mall up the highway might have a Zeller's with a restaurant. So you'd visit your grandma in your small Northern Ontario home town and together you'd go and she'd buy you a grilled cheese and coconut cream pie and she'd order some kind of soup and bread product she'd cover in margarine. And you'd sit there and hear about people you don't know who have died.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:42 AM on March 23, 2023 [20 favorites]

Incidentally, there's a previously about Target's failure in Canada.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:46 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've never even heard anyone else talk about Zellers, let alone pine for it.

Yeah, if I had to compile a list of defunct Canadian chains that I’d be happy to see come back, Zellers would not make the top twenty. Grand & Toy (their brick and mortar stores), Classic Bookshops, Eaton’s: sure. Zellers? Okay, I guess.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:53 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I miss Zellers because there is a niche that has remained relatively unfilled in Canada since it left, and that niche is a predictable selection of low-mid priced home goods. You can buy cheap shit that may or may not work or last and which you can't return if they don't at Dollarama. You can buy some of the mid-high priced goods at Canadian Tire or pay much more for exactly the same thing at The Bay. You can hope to find what you're looking for at HomeSense or Costco, but if they're not selling it at that time, well, too bad, ain't it? In Ontario, Giant Tiger serves some of this niche, but with very limited selection.

The only place I can think of currently that touches on Zellers' selection of just 'stuff' is WalMart, and if Zellers stores were dingy and rundown by the end, WalMart somehow manages to open stores that are chaotic, dingy and awful even when they are brand new.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:57 AM on March 23, 2023 [14 favorites]

a predictable selection of low-mid priced home goods

Preach. I literally have some cheap-but-sturdy hand towels (they had to be, I had no money at the time) at a Zellers in Windsor sometime in the early 1990s. They're still intact and in service.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:02 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Zellers restaurant was legit, this food truck bs is bs (though we did call the one in my hometown the Kill It instead of Skillet).
posted by rodlymight at 10:07 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Zellers is magnificent, if for no other reason than this

(original Joel Plaskett "Nowhere with You" where it doesn't sound like it's originating from a sunken shipwreck)
posted by elkevelvet at 10:13 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

When my family moved here we were poor immigrants, my mum supporting us on a lab assistant's salary, so Zeller's and By-Way, over in the east end where all the scary metalhead kids lived, was where we'd go, when we had to, on a Saturday to buy clothes: cheap knock-offs that were no match for the Ralph Lauren button downs or Far West ski jackets of my preppy grade school classmates. Stuff with blocky geometric 80s patterns that I actually loved and was proud of, but there were probably snickers behind my back.
I imagine the clientele is still the same in these kinds of stores, if not more so, given recent trends: 'New Canadians', who won't feel any sort of nostalgia for Zellers and will only shop there if it's at least as cheap as Walmart.
posted by Flashman at 10:32 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Joel Plaskett! I loooooove Joel Plaskett. I call him Canada's Musical Sweetheart.
posted by Kitteh at 10:32 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I loved Bi-Way because it was always cheap and the weirdest mix of complete crap and really good stuff seriously marked down. They got the remnants from all the big stores, so you never know what you would find. Plus the stores were always a reasonable size, so didn't take long to go through Bi-Way looking for a deal. I missed Bi-Way in a way I never did Zellers when it went.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:32 AM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

My favourite thing about Zellers is that when it was closing it resulted in The Case of the BBQ Bandits.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 10:42 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a small child, the thing I remember most about Bi-Way was that it always smelled like off-gassing flip-flops if you know what I mean? Like the stuff they were selling was way too smelly to put in a proper department store but hey, why not send them to Bi-Way! I can't imagine working 8 hours a day in all that was terribly good for a person.
posted by some loser at 10:43 AM on March 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

Also the Zellers restaurant - I remember it's one of the few places I ever ate the dish known as "Liver and Onions" and actually enjoyed it. Who knows how or why they managed it, but I swear it happened.
posted by some loser at 10:45 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

What was really awful was Bargain Harold's. My parents would shop for clothes for us there. Gawd, but I hated that place, and despised all of the horrible and out-of-fashion clothes they bought for me there. Just big wooden bins of stuff you had to dig through in the basement of the Pen Centre in St. Catharines. It wasn't that they couldn't afford to shop elsewhere, they saw no point in buying anything but the cheapest for kids who would just grow out of their clothes. Bargain Harold's clothes meant that I was really happy to go to a Catholic School with a uniform. I dreaded "out of uniform" days and would often "forget" and wear my uniform.

Take that, Zellers and Bi-Way! You were never as shitty as Bargain Harold's!
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:58 AM on March 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

is this thread leading to Frenchys??
posted by elkevelvet at 11:05 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Man, Frenchys is its own thing, ain't it? The Wilmot Frenchys was THE PLACE when I was going to school in Lawrencetown NS.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:09 AM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

You were never as shitty as Bargain Harold's!

Ah, memories. The bullies in my elementary school used "Bi-Way clothes" as a frequent pejorative, and I was on the receiving end of some of that.

Speaking of memories, when a Bargain Harold's opened (it was almost right next door to the Zeller's in town where we shopped), I never got dragged in there for clothes because my mom took a look around and declared it "a bunch of crap."

Small mercies.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:32 AM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Oh geeze. These guys sell Bargan Harolds t-shirts, as well as a bunch of other dead Canadian stores. I don't know if I could even do that ironically.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:41 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I can never remember if our Mum took us to Woolco or Zeller's for grilled cheese sandwiches and grilled bran muffins with margarine. But I do remember that this magnificent Emily Haines video -- filmed at a Zeller's to great effect -- was what got me to buy Knives Don't Have Your Back.

If you want to talk WTF Canadian retail rebranding, the WTF champion still has to be Eaton's Aubergine campaign ca. 2000. (Video directed by Floria Sigismondi).

Dollarama rule of thumb: Don't buy anything with moving parts and it will probably be OK.

Giant Tiger rule of thumb: Go in, get lost, maybe get lucky. I have found stunning bargains, like decent quality linen-look curtains (yes, plastic) for less than $10 per panel., that I only regret not buying more of as I was staggering back home on my own after Xmas on a Go train.
posted by maudlin at 11:45 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Giant Tiger rule of thumb: if you see a fleece zippered hoodie in blue with a full body print, front and back, of a wolf on a ridge howling at the sky, you buy and wear that hoodie everywhere to the point your patient and ever-loving partner starts making hints after Year 5 or so, like "joke was funny, maybe time to retire joke" and by now you love that hoodie and it's probably the single garment you wear most often
posted by elkevelvet at 11:55 AM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

I am a little sad that the closet Giant Tiger is 7km away in Scarberia. We hardly ever cross the Don except to go to Costco, and that's only every couple months in a rental car.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:11 PM on March 23, 2023

I've never even heard anyone else talk about Zellers, let alone pine for it.

Oh man, my relatives who still live in small towns all miss and reminisce about Zellers. Why? Because prior to Walmart (which even now you still have to drive into a bigger town to access), Zellers was the only store of its type in many small towns (after Woolco and Kmart had disappeared). I get why middle class people in Southern Ontario might might not care but many poor folks and small towners loved their Zellers.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:36 PM on March 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

For the record, here's my Zellers experience... It was a place I went to buy jeans, socks, underwear, and maybe sometimes slippers or winter boots. Maybe a belt. I think sheets once. Mostly cheap clothes - Walmart serves that purpose now for me. There *was* a diner attached to the one I used to go to - I think I had a sandwich and soup there once that was mediocre but dirt cheap.

I've never really bought into the whole "Canadians love Tim Hortons/Zellers/whatever" stuff. We are just surrounded by giant corporate chains that destroyed all the mom and pops, that's all. It's like if you're a Canadian of modest means/working long hours where the hell *else* are you gonna get a coffee? It's Tim's or McDonalds. Starbucks if you have a good job. There are independently owned coffee shops, sure, they're few and far between and typically on the expensive end of the scale. Walk into one of those you'll find half a dozen software developers almost guaranteed.

Anyway, you know what store I miss? There used to be this placed called "Hobby World" just a big store full of model trains, RC stuff, clay, paint, balsa wood, plastic models, cardboard, glue, blocks of styrofoam, tools... Like an art supply and electronics store combined into one. It wasn't a chain. Pandemic killed it.
posted by signsofrain at 12:46 PM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

Maybe this is the place to ask: what was the name of the "cool", slickly-branded floor of the Eaton's at the Eaton Centre in the late 90s? Like, where you could buy raver pants? They had a full floor in Toronto but I think they had sections in other locations...

This has bugged me for ages.
posted by avocet at 1:31 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

My partner waxes very nostalgically about Eaton's, which sadly predates my Canadian presence.

The only thing I recall about Eaton's was their wildly camp attempt to be relevant at the end, such as this wild ad about aubergine that thrilled my little gay heart.
posted by selenized at 1:56 PM on March 23, 2023

I think this is the lede (unless I missed this link above):

CBC: Zellers relaunches 12 stores across Canada today — and nostalgia is the door crasher
posted by ovvl at 1:58 PM on March 23, 2023

I remember Eatons, they had better food than Zellers but we rarely went. Mom shopped a lot at Zellers because it was cheap. The first birthday gift I bought my sister was at a Zellers (a wristwatch) and the first time my sister got caught for shoplifting was at a Zellers.

I can't remember where this was from, but I'm pining for a piece of white bread with a couple of slices of reconstituted turkey with gravy on top and a side of peas.
posted by porpoise at 4:06 PM on March 23, 2023

I can't remember where this was from, but I'm pining for a piece of white bread with a couple of slices of reconstituted turkey with gravy on top and a side of peas.

Here you go.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:12 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

We had a lot of these types of stores at one time, as others have mentioned: Kresge's, K-Mart, Woolworth's, BiWay, and of course Sears, The Bay, Simpsons, Eatons, and also Consumer's Distributing (although not really the same)... but as jacquilynne mentions Zeller's fit a niche - at it's height it was the best place for reasonably priced everything that you couldn't get at Canadian Tire or the grocery store - and it carried some of that stuff too. Everything from shoes to food to electronics, for every room at the house. Most of it was affordable for many people and of at least decent quality. Not saying it was top of the line stuff, but you could get most of your shopping done there in one trip and not spend your whole paycheque.

It was also a place everyone at any age shopped. I have memories as a kid of buying supplies for back-to-school & projects there, make-up & accessories in my early teens, kitchen items when I moved out on my own... I missed it when it left... I don't know that the nostalgia is enough for me to change my current shopping patterns, but I'll probably go check one out sooner than later. I'm not usually a selfie person, but I may even take a photo in front of the Zellers sign.
posted by Laura in Canada at 6:43 PM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

→ I am a little sad that the closet Giant Tiger is 7km away

If it's the one I'm thinking of (off Kennedy) it's a block from my house. Inner Circle (Guyanese takeout) across the road is off the charts. And talk of outdated slang, Scarberia??? Haven't heard that since 2003. The little Costco Business Centre (good for food, awful for everything else) nearby was briefly a Zellers, then stayed closed for years as it was passed over by Target. I don't remember much about that Zellers apart from I went in once and it didn't have what I wanted, so I left. The only time I was in the nearest Target (inexplicably near Dawes & Danforth, now a Lowes, soon to be a whatever-the-fuck-LowesCanada's-new-owners-will-call-it), I saw a man walk in, look around just inside the doorway, then explosively shit himself. Pretty much sums up the Target Canada story.

Also, Giant Tiger's owners are kind of ecchh.

→ a piece of white bread with a couple of slices of reconstituted turkey with gravy on top and a side of peas.

Watts in Eglinton Square has your back. There used to be a place in Parkway that was like that too, but Parkway got kinda fancy, and thus wrong.
posted by scruss at 6:48 PM on March 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Yea, as many have mentioned, Zellers perfectly fit that Canadian late 20th century low-mid niche of affordable and not too fancy generic household things, and better than Bi-Way K-Mart etc. I consumed their products when not at a thrift shop. But even before the Target debacle, Walmart had started killing Zellers with sharper price-points, despite the fact that Walmart was a dismal and depressing space that I avoid.

This new Hudson's Bay Zellers retail stunt is probably doomed to failure because that time has now passed, and the balance doesn't quite add up anymore.
posted by ovvl at 7:58 PM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I loathe Zellers.

And I say this as someone whose shitty small town is still at the mercy of a Fields of all places.

FIELDS!!!
posted by wats at 8:21 PM on March 23, 2023

There are still Fields? Wow!
posted by jacquilynne at 8:50 PM on March 23, 2023

The only thing I recall about Eaton's was their wildly camp attempt to be relevant at the end, such as this wild ad about aubergine yt that thrilled my little gay heart.

That entire extravagant last-ditch Eaton’s rebranding at the end was overseen by someone who had been my fellow student in art class fifteen year earlier.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:48 AM on March 24, 2023

→ This new Hudson's Bay Zellers retail stunt is probably doomed to failure because that time has now passed

It's a pure pre-COVID nostalgia thing: everything was of course great back then, and let's revel in retro to avoid thinking of the current austerity. Of course, lower-priced retail is trying to feed off that austerity, too.

nb: everything was of course not great back then.
posted by scruss at 6:29 AM on March 24, 2023

MetaFilter: I saw a man walk in, look around just inside the doorway, then explosively shit himself.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:01 AM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

In Toronto we also had Honest Ed's An independent discount store. Huge, garish.
The store sign used 23,000 light bulbs.

And his restaurant Ed’s Warehouse .
You needed sunglasses inside it was so garish.

All gone now.
posted by yyz at 8:36 AM on March 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

warriorqueen, are you me? I also got my first bra at the Zellers at Shoppers World Danforth, although Gerrard Square was my most-frequented Zellers.

I have all the nostalgia for that store, and really miss there being a nice, one stop, non-Walmart place to pick up a plain t-shirt, some toothpaste, shoelaces and new sheets.

And I could really go for a hot chicken sandwich from their dinner right about now.
posted by Lexicographer at 12:19 PM on March 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Oh yes, I'm not even in T.O. anymore and I was still sad and misty-eyed when I heard about the closing of Honest Ed's.
I'm sure it was the right time, it certainly had it's day, but I have some good memories of it and I loved the garish-ness, all of it, the lights, the hand-painted signs, the crazy colours. It was it's own thing.
posted by Laura in Canada at 7:06 PM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Early report on the new Zellers: meh.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:25 AM on March 25, 2023 [2 favorites]