*Don't forget to check out my other Kmart videos* Footage shot on 11/17/2004. Electronics department footage. People shopping. This was filmed the same day that Kmart announced that they were purchasing Sears in a $11 billion deal. #kmart
This is the best kind of time travel: the ordinary, routine, sometimes mundane. The "in-between" moments that make up so much of life. You never realize you'll miss something like pushing a cart around the supermarket with mom on the way home from school until it's just another past errand now long behind you.
😭You have no idea man of course you do but man watching this hurts. so many of my family members were alive, i was a kid living my best life, actually i was a teen so i was getting a bit older and had access to newer things, ahhhhh. i would do anything to go back. its not fair. why didnt we appreciate it more 😭 people say its cause we are depressed but if things in life didnt change so much and for the worse that would not be the case. i literally lost my aunt to covid and none of my grandparents are alive.
@@allimkhan7540 there are sooo many people who say that about the mid 2ks. Erly 2ks were great, even though we had 911 which was horrible. Between 2005-2006 I notice things slowly getting weird. By 2007 I remember telling people things have gotten weir and many agreed with me. .
@@amarstaThe merchandise they offered online at first was probably pretty limited or the same thing you could just get in store. People just probably thought if you’re going in store to pick up an online order, why not just shop normally then?
I miss Kmart so much. Used to go shopping there every weekend with my mom and it’s become an integral fond childhood memory of mines. I was so sad the day it was announced they were on the list of stores being closed down.
As a 47-year-old, this doesn't seem that long ago to me. What were some similarities and differences between 2004 and 2023? Well, let's see. It was a post-9/11 world. There was the internet and cell phones, but no smartphones. However, there were iPods, which are now obsolete but were pretty new and widely used at that time. There was no RU-vid yet; that was still one year away. Twitter was still two years away, but there was early social media like MySpace and early Facebook. This was before the financial crisis and the Great Recession. This was also pre-Obama, who was, at the time, a state-level Illinois Senator. He would be running (that year) for the federal U.S. Senate seat for Illinois. At the time, Trump was a famous businessperson and reality TV personality. In 2004, the U.S. was engaged in two wars: the War in Iraq (ended in 2011) and the War in Afghanistan (ended in 2021). Brick-and-mortar retail chains remained the dominant force in the retail industry at that time, but e-commerce was on the rise. Of course, there was no Covid-19, and Chat GPT didn't exist. So, some significant changes have taken place. Still, though, I don't feel like I'm in an era now that is so far removed. In fact, I feel like we could still be classified under a larger "grand" period grouping going back as far as the late 70s. I have felt that way for a while as I have seen the world slowly change over the years and decades, but as of recently I feel like we are coming to a major turning point where we will finally phase over to a new grand time period. So far though in my life it feel like there has only been one with smaller eras.
These were the final days of Kmart’s heyday! Even after Walmart came to town in 1996, our local Kmart stores still did okay for a while, because Walmart was such a dump. But then after Target came along in 2005, that’s when Kmart really started falling apart.
@@jackson5116 For a while K-Mart had a normal sized location until they got a newer, bigger one in late 93/early 94 in my area. Until then, Caldor was their biggest competition, until Wal-Mart came around in 93, which prompted K-Mart to upgrade where I am. Caldor would later close their doors in late 98. Target than came about here in the late 2000's/early 2010's(teens), and knew K-Mart's days were probably numbered then. As good as it might be to have those stores close by, I do miss the more simpler days when we didn't have much here, but were good enough with what we did have, until commercial development began to start popping up like crazy as time went on.
One regret I have in life was that I wasnt born in a time when I couldve been in my 20s like I am right now but in 2004, so I can see how truly Kmarts were from a adult perspective. I remember shopping with my mom at my local Kmart back in 2004, I really miss those days looking back it knowing all the Kmarts I knew are all gone. It was truly an honor for me to say I have shopped at Kmart.
I was in my 20s in 2004. I was 22. My K-mart started to go out of business by the 2000s. I remember when K-mart rebranded itself as Big K in the late 90s. By the mid to late 2000s or maybe early 2010s, my K-mart was taken over by this Sears Outlet store. The store was awful. Barebone selection of stuff. It was nothing like K-mart.
But let's be honest. If you were in a Kmart in 2004 you were already time traveling back to like 1997. I remember standing at the checkout at my local one in like 2008 looking around and feeling like I was standing in 1999.
I honestly didnt understand the feeling, but yeah. I remember being at kmart around 2009-11 when kmart was declining. I loved it as a kid and as a teen it was still pretty fun to browse. when my local Kmarts were going out of business I was sad even as a 17-18 year old. It was like being back in 2000.
I was on my Honeymoon in 2015 and we found a Kmart. We spent like an Hour in there 😂. Had those old Tiger electronic handheld games. It literally looked like the 90s in there.
That's no joke. When I started in '95 the store was new and bright white. 20 years later the shelves, floors, registers, even the bathroom walls were yellowed from the flourescent lighting
That's funny! I was thinking the exact same thing! That OLD lady fiddling with the toaster oven. "What's this new fangled contraption for?" That lady probably passed 10 years ago. I'd like to know what store this was. Look's like one I was in.
You never know. There could still be a few of the elderly people still alive in this video and if they are still alive they would probably be 100 years old or a little older than that. There have been a good majority of people that have lived to be 100 years old and even past that.
I loved our Kmart, I watched them build it and then watched it slowly go under, basically the only store I’d shop at other than Sears another store I miss..😢
I was born in 2000 and only have a few memories about 2004 such as nursery/kindergarten and my family moving into our new house (the same house we’re still living in to this day).
My mom and I would go to K-mart all the time. Our favorite thing to do was go to the music section and pick out a CD to listen to on the way home. I saved up enough money from helping my dad on the weekends to buy a gamecube there. I can walk the store in my head still, but this is an amazing visual reminder.
Looks exactly how I remember it. I can smell the video, hahaha. Had many Icees, popcorn, nachos, and Little Caesars pizza in that era. It's funny, cause in 2004 I'm sure there were many people who longed for the old 1970s Kmarts of their youth, and likely complained about the modern stores. We look back on videos like these with so must reverence; the feeling that the past was so much better. But once we take off the rose tinted glasses we realize how blinding those nostalgic feelings can be.
@@rabiabegum6136 It has something to do with selective memory. Usually we remember mostly positive things from the past and tend to forget about the negative especially when times are hard in the present.
Back in 2004, people actually talked to each other face to face because here was no social media, and people weren't glued to their smartphones because they didn't exist. So in that regard, the past was better.
@@hakeemsd70m social people always talk to people no matter what. In 2004, a lot people scoffed at those who were in chat rooms, blogs, messageboards but now they are filling social media with garbage all day.
I actually miss Kmart😢 25 years ago, that was my go to store and they were open 24 hours, a lot of stuff was reasonably priced🤑 back then I lived by a freshly built Kmart and it was pretty awesome👍
My mother and I used to take every Friday and shop at KMart after an early breakfast. I would usually buy new shirts and stuff but loved the electronics section. It was never busy so felt right at home and the whole experience had a real cozy feel to it.
This is the era when Kmart started going downhill. I remember some Kmarts had Hot Wheels Collector events where if you were lucky enough to be early in line, you got to look through cases of Hot Wheels vehicles and pick out what you wanted. I only went to two events. They stopped doing that sometime in 2007.
Funny enough, when I'd worked there in 2014, they had a Hot Wheels event and had me run it. They gave me raffle tickets and told me to hand them out to people. Only like three people had showed and I'd just said to hell with it and let them go through the boxes.
19 yrs ago life has changed so much ! Notice Everyone seems friendly and not Waring pajamas in public no one staring or constantly yakking on they're phones
lol I guess I'm old but besides the TVs this looks exactly the same as right now, to me. I also had to remind myself 2004 was nearly 20 years ago. Seems like 10, absolute tops.
Quite amusing this was shot the day which is commonly referred to as the start of Kmart's downfall. So this video is basically a glimpse of Kmart's peak. Thanks for uploading.
The weird thing about 05:29 is about the kid in the shopping cart. He looks to be about 5 or 6... that makes him 24 or 25 today. I know that's just how time works but it feels so weird...
I used to date a girl with a young kid that was born the same year as you. To think, you all are running around on RU-vid posting comments now...Enjoy your youth!
@@H.K.5 It wasn't awful. I liked elementary school. Were you bullied or something? No friends? I dunno what to tell you, man. I already said I'm sorry your childhood wasn't great. What else do you want from me? Some of us enjoyed our childhood.
watching made cry. the last kmart in my town closed around 2004, i was a little kid but still remember going with my dad, older sister, aunt, and grandma to buy clothes, get food, or look at toys amd video games. watching this didn’t just feel like watching a video, but felt like looking into a window of the past. into the simpler carefree world i knew long ago
This was way before people didn't care how they looked in public. As I watched the video, none of the shoppers wore pajama bottoms and a coat like they do today.
Interesting video. More stock and more customers than I can remember ever seeing in a Kmart. Seeing those prices and the goods like the 'Peak' antifreeze reminded me why I rarely shopped at Kmart. The quality of their merchandise and their prices. One was high and another was low. Not hard to figure which was which. 15 years later a gallon of Prestone Antifreeze was CHEAPER @Walmart than Kmart's 2004 price. That's the story of why Sears and Kmart are no longer around.
K-Mart was passed it's peak by this point, but this was probably one of the last few years that it was still relevant. Last time I went into a K-Mart was in 2011 (and only did so because I was nostalgic for the early 2000s) and it was very near the end by that point.
I remembered when my dad most of the time say: “I need to go to Kmart” when we were in Puerto Rico in Juana Diaz and also we went to look for the transcription and go with him, Unfortunately the store closed in early 2020 and now is a Pepe Ganga
most didn't see any true remodels, the few that did circa 2010 just got a few new signs, and the 2004 logo put on the face of the entrance, but many, many of them retained their early-2000's look.
@@jackson5116 As much as I dislike Wal*Mart, their remodels into Supercenters were very vanilla and out of time. Meanwhile Super K-Marts seemed to be stuck in 1997-2005 design wise. I rather prefer the 70-80s relics over the trendy looks of the 90s.
@@jackson5116 Early 2000's? Most hadn't been updated, really updated, 10-15 years before then. Just spruced up. A good deal of the ones I went to in 7-8 states, right out of the late '70's early '80's.
That was my time. I was 17 and no one looked at their phone much except to play Snake. There was technological progress but it was just before the internet exploded. You weren't bombarded with stuff from the internet all the time, you still met regularly and arranged to meet on the phone. I'm glad I got to grow up like this.
What really gets me thinking is most of us people apprecitate those nostalgic journeys today… why is it like that? Is it because of nowadays issues in all kind of sections, escpecially when it comes to our own safety… each further second in life keeps us longing for easier times we used to know when we were younger. We won‘t ever get there again, mankind is damned to end in tragedy because there is nothing to reach anymore. We all here wish for a simple life in which appreciation is still possible and existent for everyone here on earth … but the system is made to proceed… and so our achievements lead to a harder feel of joy. Life is tough and it wont get and better. Thanks to all of your time-travelers!
2004, age 32. This was around the time of one of my last trips to KMart. I used to shop at the ones in Moorestown and Burlington. I loved those exciting "Blue Light Specials"!
I live in Switzerland and we have other similar stores but its sad that they are closing all stores in the US while in our country Malls and Stores are still popular and make millions and Billions of Dollars in Switzerland Swiss francs
Makes me feel old to know 2004 was 20 years ago now , feels like yesterday , miss stores like KMART and places in Canada that were similar like Zellers ...We had both at one time and other places but most are gone now except Walmart and Canadian Tire ....We now live in the Amazon world of shopping ..
I was only two years old when this was shot. Now I’m finishing up my undergraduate degree. It’s weird - this video simultaneously seems like it was shot forever ago and like it was shot yesterday. I really do enjoy these slice-of-life videos. Thank you for sharing :)
I remember going to a Kmart in 2012. It was in Middlebury CT, and my mom and I were going to get Christmas decorations. I saw tons of sales for the PS3 and Xbox 360 during that holiday season.
Pure nostalgia i remember going to Kmart in the early 2000s as a kid theres still one an hour away from me I’m planning on visiting it for the nostalgia before it closes
When adults and people would interact with each other as humans. I was already in Kindergarden around this time. Halo 2 posters were everywhere. Game Crazy had a entire wall dedicated to selling Halo 2. The coolest toy i ever wanted at the time was Black Rangers Morpher from Dino Thunder. The music was so good, i remember telling my self. I cant wait to be adult adn experience the world more. I dont regret those words but i do wish i could experience that world as adult and do wish that things didnt have to get as bad as they did. But things can alwasy change.
Oh the jewelery counter I remember getting up as a kid and me and my grandfather going to Kmart very early for a sale on a specific jewelry It was the first time I'd ever picked out a present for my mom all on my own. He passed 3 months ago It's those dumb moments you miss
@@H.K.5 That's what I was thinking. This looks almost identical to a modern day Walmart. Even the appliances look exactly the same. I guess there's no real reason to change toaster design. The only thing that's different is the electronics section, obviously. Even the fashion isn't terribly different, though that could be from fashion trends looping back around.
I often miss Kmart. This store was laid out exactly like ours. Walmart and target are on the other side of town and what was once Kmart is now a uhaul store. I still have some items from Kmart. A wooden shelf and my weight bench.
Around this time I used to go to Big Kmart a lot with my brother. I bought my first Xbox there. As sell as my first Cd which was Trapt’s first album. After big Kmart. Me and my bro Would head over to Burger King.
A little past 2:00 it is announced to “visit our website” and shopping by web was still a bit of a novelty in 2004. Amazon was still mostly selling books. Retail was still very much in play, online shopping was so much smaller back then.
Kmart was already dying by the mid 2000's. Definitely not as busy as I remember it as a kid in the 90's. Best thing about Kmart was eating little Caesar's pizza after shopping 😆
