Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Longtime readers here at Houston Historic Retail might remember our Vintage Ads series of posts. It’s been a while since we’ve posted a new Vintage Ads post so it seems like a good time to make a new installment in the series. This installment of the series will look at retail ads from the August 16, 1989 issue of the Houston Chronicle. The thumbnail images included in the post might be too small to read, but simply click on the links below the images to …
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A Tour of Tomball Retail in 2000 and 1965
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Loyal Houston Historic Retail readers may recall that a few weeks ago, we published a blog post showing screenshots from a YouTube video published by Dan Starr and filmed by his wife Amy that showed Tomball’s retail scene in the year 1998. Well, Dan has come through once again as he recently uploaded some video footage taken by Amy and her father in the year 2000. This footage, which was taken right after Y2K, shows some of the retailers from the 1998 video in greater …
Keep readingA Tour of Tomball Retail in 1998
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Tomball might seem like just another Houston suburb today, but nearly a quarter of a century ago in 1998, Tomball was a bit of a distant place to visit even for those of us like myself who lived in the Northwest Houston suburbs in the Willowbrook Mall area. That said, I did visit Tomball quite frequently in the 1990s and through the turn of the Millennium period. Given that, what a surprise it was recently when I came across a video on YouTube posted by …
Keep readingVintage Texas Retail Videos in 1080p from the Jones Film Collection
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Those who have been reading Houston Historic Retail for some period of time know that I did a two-part series (Part I and II) in early 2021 about the excellent retail videos available at The Portal of Texas History website operated by the University of North Texas Library. Most of the videos at The Portal were supplied by Dallas-Fort Worth TV station KXAS-TV. Well, another Dallas Metroplex university library, the Southern Methodist University Library, also has a collection of videos in their G. William Jones …
Keep readingRetail News: Remarkable! Randalls Returns to Card Free Savings
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Here’s some recent retail news that I found to be quite remarkable! For the first time in almost exactly 25 years, Randalls shoppers no longer need to have a Randalls Remarkable Card, or the Safeway Club Card equivalent, to get most sale prices. I was recently reading some new posts at the Retail Watchers forum recently when I came across a post from someone indicating that their Randalls store in Austin was advertising that the card was no longer necessary to get sale prices. After …
Keep readingOnline shopping at Gerland’s and other unique Houston grocers from 1989-90
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Houston was an interesting place in around 1989 and 1990. The economy, both locally and nationally, was a bit sluggish at the time. Locally, the area was still recovering from the problems facing the oil and gas industry throughout most of the 1980s. Given these problems, one might expect the local supermarket scene to be rather troubled as well, but that was not at all the case. Perhaps the most famous Houston supermarket story of 1989 was Boris Yeltsin’s famous visit to a Clear Lake-area …
Keep readingKids’ Kounty: Goodness Grace-ious, What a Toy Store!
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston If I told you, the loyal Houston Historic Retail reader, that a retailer opened a toy store that made the typical Toys R Us seem quaint by combining the typical big-box toy store with a children’s clothing/shoe store, a youth furniture store, a pet store, a photo studio, a full-service bicycle shop, a hobby shop, and a nationally-known fast food restaurant in a building that is larger than typical supermarkets of the time, you’d probably think that this toy store opened during some point between …
Keep readingDigging through the Photo Box: 1980s Houston Retail On Vintage Aerial
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Every so often, someone in the retail enthusiast community will stumble upon great sources of retail history in unlikely or hidden corners of the Internet. Loyal Houston Historic Retail readers will know that in just the last few months, we’ve managed to find a large repository of retail news videos clips at The Portal to Texas History website and we also found a large collection of retail annual reports at the Internet Archive. Friend of the HHR blog and fellow retail blogger South Texas Retail …
Keep readingHappy 40th Anniversary, Willowbrook Mall!
Editor’s Note: Today we begin Houston Historic Retail’s Month of Malls! Our 3 Wednesday posts will feature all new Mall content! Lets start off Part One with Northwestern Houston Resident Expert Anonymous in Houston! -Mike Those who have visited the Willowbrook Mall area in Northwest Houston know that several words can be used to describe the territory, but ‘sleepy’ is probably not one of them in current times. However, prior to the official opening of Willowbrook Mall on September 23, 1981 (though the original three anchors of Sears, Foley’s, and Montgomery Ward had all opened for business by September 2, …
Keep readingAlvin Antique Center & Marketplace and Getting to the Bottom of Bottom Dollar Stores
Blog post and captions written by: Anonymous in Houston Photos taken by: Mike Researched by: Mike & Anonymous in Houston One thing I like to do when I have some free time is to poke around on Google Maps to see if I can spot any interesting retailers in areas that I don’t visit very often. I was recently browsing the Alvin aerial map to see if I could spot anything interesting. For those unfamiliar with Houston, Alvin is a small community in the far southern part of the Houston metro area. I spotted a big box retail looking building …
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