K-Mart: The Rise, Fall, 80s Blue Light Specials and Slush Puppies Nostalgia 

A moment of silence to all of us kids that showed up on the first day of school rocking some bright white Trax sneakers. This is why Gen X is so mentally tough.

My gosh do I miss the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. What a time to be alive.

I miss shopping at Kmart. 😢

Kmart, JC Penney, & Sears each had a HUGE Christmas catalog that are a core memory for me! My Mom kept the JC Penney's Christmas catalog for my birth year and I honestly cherish it, even if it's just a bunch of paper to anyone else. Great flashback to my childhood!! Thanks for sharing.

K Mart had the best cafetaria. That was probably my favorite thing about K Mart. I remember going Christmas shopping with my mom at K Mart and we always ate in the cafeteria.

In 1991, I remember being 10 years old and saving $200 for a brand new Super NES the day it launched. We went to K-Mart in Pensacola near Cordova mall, and I ran to the electronics section to see one, single Super NES left. I snagged it, and we went to the front checkout, only for me to learn a very important lesson: sales tax. The total was $212, and I had $200. Looking up at my mom with totally defeated eyes, I couldn't even muster up the courage to ask her to cover the difference....but she did, and I was so relieved. I learned a very valuable lesson that day, actually two: factor in sales tax, and my Mom was my heroine that day

Worked at Kmart 1981-1987 while in high school and college. It was a GREAT place to work. Made lots of friends there and it helped me to grow up by learning how to deal with many types of people.

My KMart used to sell the best ham sandwiches at the deli in front of the store. Five sandwiches stacked on top of each other like a loaf of bread in a plastic bag. In 1997, I also worked security at their world headquarters in Troy, Michigan.

FYI The original blue light specials were a sight to see. They would actually dim the store lights down low and would JUST have the blue lights to get the consumers' undivided attention. (Around the mid 80s and only select stores would do that) Then it would go defunct.

Great toy section in 80’s. Transformers, Star Wars, all the kool lines

I miss the good old days, cruising Kmart parking lot when I was a teenager. Good memories

I’ll never forget the lunch counter at our local Kmart back in the 1980s. It was always fun to get grilled cheese sandwiches there.

Oh I miss slush puppies. Slush Puppies was one of the best things of the 80s for me.

As a former employee from '89 til '03, I sure do miss it. It was like a family and I always had to do the Blue Light Specials, which I didn't mind because I liked doing them. Those were the days.

K Mart in Miami (When I was a kid - circa 1972 and beyond) was where we bought all of our K-Tell music albums. It's where I got my first books (C.S. Lewis - The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe) There was an actual cart that was rolled around the store with the famous flashing Blue Light, for the Blue Light Specials in each particular location. K mart was always a shopping adventure.

Man, the nostalgia is real. I want to go back. The world is too fucked up now.

In Puerto Rico, we had both Kresge (until 1986) and Kmart. Going to Kmart on Saturdays was a thing for Me that I always looked forward to. I remember the Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars for $1.17, the smell of fresh donuts… I can still remember those great memories.

I have been amazed by the evolving story of K-Mart and Sears joining forces to fail together. There should be college courses about these companies, addressing what caused the most dominant retail giants of the 80's to dissolve into obsolescence in 25 years. There are reasons that Walmart survived, and these reasons should be explored and taught.

I have fond memories of friday nights in the 80s/early 90s going to K-mart with my folks after we had dinner. Me and my dad would go to the cafeteria and get a slushie. They always had cool toys too and lots of books and games. In our town, back in the 80s anyway, it was the *only* department store in the county.

I grew up going to K-Mart. Absolutely enjoyed going with my parents: whether it was for back-to-school, Christmas time to put the hottest toys or bikes on Lay-A-Away, etc.

When I worked at k-mart we usually had four to 8 front end cashiers, a cashier supervisor, two or three customer service specialists, department managers and supervisors all working at the same time! In addition to the stock clerks.

Late 70s early 80s. Every Friday, my parents would go to dinner at Long John Silvers...their favorite place and then off to K-mart. Every darned week. I loved it, I would just go the the toy section to pick something out, I had a $5 limit. LOL. So many Star Wars figures.

I remember. In the late 70's K-mart was King!

Man what a beautiful memories of k Mart.😢😢😢😢😢

The store of my youth. My dad loved K-Mart. We go there almost every weekends.

I've worked Kmart for 16 years, on and off since 1996, and even transferred from Massachusetts to Florida. I know there was a store in Lantana, Boca Raton, and Ft. Lauderdale, but don't recall a Miami location. All the years I worked, the restaurants never sold Slush Puppies, but Icee's. And the restaurant would change it's name every few years(Eatery, Eatery Express, K Cafe, before just being promoted as Little Caesars, Nathan's, etc.). There is even a privately owned store in Australia that seems to be doing quite well.

OMG SUPER Kmarts where everything! I used to love the Icee’s too

My mom loved Kmart. I had my first tuna melt there so good. I miss Kmart too.

I worked a couple years '82-85 in the men's department. It was a great job for a teenager and it actually had a real career path back in the day. In fact, my store was the first to get name brand jeans like Chic, Sergio Valente, Sassoon, Jordache and Guess!

K mart was my 1st job

I loved KMart. Their submarine sandwiches were so good!! I moved from Maryland to Arkansas in 1990 and it was all Walmart. I had never even heard of Walmart before then

I worked at Kmart for 2 and a half years up until it closed. It didn’t pay nothing but it was most fun job I had

Growing up in the 70's the only K-Mart in the area was pretty good size. There was a pet store inside as well as a sitdown restaurant. It even had an auto bay because they sold tires. Ironically, it's now a Wal-Mart grocery store.

My very first job was at K-Mart. This was in 1980 and we were paid in cash.

My lil daddy and I lived for the blue light specials in the 80's daddy drove one time in 1982 during an ice storm that was 8" deep on Christmas Eve to get to K mart for the blue light special...He was my HERO and I sure miss those days

I actually watched this and it was a good flashback of riding around the store on a big wheel 😂😊

I started working for Kmart back in 1998 at the very end of the Kmart golden years. 2001 came and went and well Kmart went bankrupt and a few went to jail. Haha. Long time ago. I remember talking to the new CEO on live Sat tv before the fall when I was the electronics manager.

Thank you! Getting old and nostalgia go hand-in-hand; stuff like this calls to very early memories I don't often access. I'm not quite old enough to remember blue-light special specials, but I do remember the popcorn, eatery, slushies -- and even a sizable live pet & fish department. As a very young kid (in the later 80s), it did seem like a retail amusement park. By the time I was in my teens, K-mart was totally uncool.

I worked there when I was a teen in the late 80s. It was a great time.

I remember going there in 1983.... summer time and the line's were to the back with people buying pool supplies and float's 🤔...the memories of being 10. .❤

The blue light special is such a great idea that could still work today. I remember the popcorn smell vividly

00:01 This was my Kmart growing up!!! Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock, Arkansas. I have huge nostalgia for it (hence watching this video). Buying my N64 at launch in the back right of the store, and a later Game Boy Color on lay-a-way. Finally getting my first golf clubs with my dad. School supplies for first grade, right behind the registers in that early shot. 😢 damn 4:30 I realize still have a Poulan “Wild Thing” chainsaw we bought at Kmart

My childhood was spent going to KMart! 🥰

Lovedddd Kmart food court ❤ i can still remember the 🍕

Omg I MISS Slush Puppies!!!! I want one right NOW!

Popcorn and slush puppies at kmart. That really takes me back. I still remember picking up my first cassette tape (Michael Jackson Thriller) and many many transformers, gijoes, matchbox, and hot wheels. Such great memories.

I remember going to Kmart in Fl about 5 years ago in Miami. It’s exactly the same. They did have really good towels for super cheap.

That was amazing how you brought me back to the years of shopping at Kmart with mom and grandma, good memories, thank you so much, this put a smile on my face ❤I subscribed

When I was a teenager got really good pieces of clothing. I remembered get good stuff that I liked. Even music, shoes, school supplies, clothing, and even got a slushy in Coca Cola or Cherry favorite. I liked the smaller old school Kmart.

I worked at K-Mart in the late 70s- early 80s and it was a good place to work. I worked in the auto shop, the pay was good and they sent the mechanics to schools for alignment, brakes, and tune ups. The schools were put on by Raybestos, Sun systems and Trw.

I remember them from the late 90s to the early 2000s , they had the best hotdogs ‼️

when I was a kid I went to the garden city K-Mart all the time with my grandparents. my grandmother would shop, and I would get a hotdog with my grampa in the caffe. those were the days.

K-Mart...The Wal Mart of the 80's! Ours had the poles with flashing lights- If you grew up in the 80-90s as a kids, feel blessed! we Truly grew up in the best times & generation there has ever been! Kids today just don't understand!!!

I remember buying Lion King on VHS at Kmart back in early 1995 the night before it was suppose to be released and bringing it to school the next day to watch in class because the teacher was amazed I got a copy early.

Damn KMart was my first job. I can still hear “under the boardwalk” playing whenever i see the logo

Don't forget Kmart had that little diner in the back and they serve those blue plate specials all the time😅😅

Our local original Kmart (opened about 1976, I think) is now a Home Depot. The next one up the road was closed down for a long time, and now it's a Walmart. But up until just a few years ago, there was another Kmart about an hour away, and it was right on the way to where we would celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family. We would always stop at Kmart, as it was open until early afternoon Thanksgiving Day, and we joked about it being our annual "pilgrimage." Then it shut down, and the location has since reopened as a Target. I used to get my film developed at Kmart, and I well remember the excitement of going to pick up my pictures and see how they turned out.

Slush puppies taste great!

I'm 36 years old, I have not been inside a Kmart store since 2013 and I remember going into Kmart with my parents every couple of days back in the 90's. Always seemed like my family found just about everything we needed in that store. I still have a Benchtop brand box cutter my dad bought back in 1996 from Kmart and I still use it to this day. Dad definitely got his money's (a couple bucks) worth and Kmart had some great quality products for the money back in the 80's & 90's!

Slush Puppies!! 🥤🐶 & Blue Light Specials!! 💙✨️ those were magical times growing up in the 80& 90's with K-Mart. Fond memories to cherish from another time and a safer world. 🔮A time when going shopping was a special event and outing and there weren't any worries, except for what Mom or Dad would SAY you have to put back!! 😂Oh to be that kid again. "I wanna go back and do it all over.. but I can't go back I know 🎶🤗😽

As a kid I hated shopping at Kmart now im nostalgic for it

I went to K-Mart for the last time in late 2019 at the North Hollywood location in Los Angeles before it closed for good. It was crazy to go in a K-Mart again as it was such a mainstay as a kid but then failed alongside Sears which is equally as wild to me

One of their last ad campaigns was hilarious! Free shipping, with the actors telling everyone "I shipped my pants!" " I shipped my bed!" ect... LOL!

As far as I remember, and I also just checked, Kmart actually acquired Sears. I dug up news articles still online from 2004 and 2005 and they all say as much. I've gotten into arguments over this in the past because it doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's what the articles (and Wikipedia, take that with a grain of salt) actually say. After the merger Kmart's parent company apparently took the Sears name.

Kmart was the stuff! I loved all the aquariums, the gun section and most of all the brand new gaming system called Nintendo sitting there available to play if you waited around long enough! My dad puffing away on his tobacco pipe while mom tried talking him into getting some cool new stuff. Ah the good old days.

When I was in college(1982) I worked at Kmart after school. Had a a lot of fun announcing and running the blue light specials, people would come running to the blue light cart and made sure they received their price markdown. I was the hero with the old school sticker price gun. 😝

I remember going to the store in like 1982 with a friend who lived near one, and as we were walking around, heading towards the checkout counter, I noticed a huge pile of pickles in the walkway about 500 jars of pickles in glass jars. this would be for stores like this sold food, and I would say to myself who would come here to buy pickles. Well, I miss the pickles and I miss the stores. It was always fun to go there and as you said it was always an adventure.

We had a K-Mart in town, in fact it held on pretty long and only closed in 2019. It was built in the late 80s/early 90s. I grew up in the 80s and I swear to God, I never heard that commercial before. I knew of the Blue Light Special, and I even remember at one point our K-Mart trying to re-implement that, but only ever on a select, crappy products no one wanted to begin with; and I never once actually saw it get used or heard about it going off. I'd only go there if I absolutely had to, especially in later years. The prices were never competitive, most of the products were junk. Too many experiences of buying clothes or shoes or a watch that would break or fall apart literally a week after buying them. Eventually you can't ignore the pattern. The flip side was that it was the closest store with a lot of home goods stuff without going out of town. Places like Dollar Tree or Ace might carry a few of those things (often at significant mark-up than anywhere else), but there's a lot of things those store don't have; and with K-Mart gone, there's just nowhere in town to find those things; and then you have to go out of town. By the end though, our K-Mart was just depressing. It was genuinely like they were waiting for someone to put the store out of its misery. The poorly maintained infrastructure, the genuinely 25-30 year old checkouts. Just hugh sections of the store they had no use for. I remember going in there probably within a year of it closing, to find half the electronics section randomly replaced with mattresses and large appliances - which they had never sold before; and seemed out of place. You definitely felt bad for the employees, but the corporation just didn't give a damn and hadn't for a long time. They didn't care about modernizing, or just maintaining the buildings. I doubt they cared about the employees.

I worked at a Kmart back in the early 80's in the Automotive dept. - more specifically the car stereos. I have some significant memories of that place due to how it never changed. EVER. The one thing you missed was the Cafe's inside the stores. All of them. That was about as significant as the Blue light specials because it was good food & cheap. Dang it....I just realized something.....I'm old....Dang it....

I want to cry 😢 I truly miss this era.

Our KMart also had cotton candy. The combination of the smell of salty/oily popcorn and sweet cotton candy was pretty good, whether you liked shopping there or not. Don't forget LAYAWAY. But should we lament the passing of KMart? Dunno. When KMart came into a town, a lot of traditional mom & pop stores usually went under. Remember in That 70s Show when Bob's successful business went under after the KMart-clone came to town?

We had a restaurant in the Kmart in my town... Wasn't great but as a lil kid I didn't know better lol good times

I used to go to Kmart every Friday night with my parents back in the early 80s. It was the highlight of the week! There were no other stores around like it. I can remember the store exactly as it was. They never updated the stores. I can still picture the floor, the lights and that small tile print at the cash registers.

I remember the Christmas jingle, “Merry Merry Christmas at your KMart Christmas store”.

I have many fond memories of working at Kmart. My first real job was at the Kmart in Mercer mall in Lawrenceville NJ. I worked in sorting goods and automotive. 17 years old selling guns and ammo, drilling holes in bowling balls for customers, blasting the demo car radios and 6x9 speakers. I learned a ton from my manager Frank Z. The cafeteria had amazing food, and getting paid in cash was great!

What memories 😑 when kids were kids. Boys were boys.girls were girls. Basic styles. I'm glad I grew up in 1980s ..Running into friends there K.

When we'd go to K Mart my Dad's first stop was the popcorn counter. We'd munch that stuff all thru the store.

Worked there in high school, 1988-89. I was clock#2, and I ran blue light specials all the time! I got my first portable CD player there, had to save up because it was $150!

It's crazy how many stores I used to go to in the 80-90s that are just gone now.

I remember loving Kmart hotdogs as a kid so i paid kmart a visit before they closed or even announced closing a few years back and it was desolate 😢 just a handful of very elderly people.

I loved KMart and miss it.

My friends in grade school all had Traxx and Roos tennis shoes, sold at Kmart. I wore Nikes or Leather Boots. I remember being jealous because my friends all had the same shoes.

My middle school had Slush Puppy machines. We also had Pizza Hut breadsticks available every day. In high school we had McDonalds in the cafeteria with self serve sauce dispensers (hot mustard, sweet & sour, bbq, etc) and self serve fountain drinks. Needless to say I was a porker for most of 7th-11th grade til I hit my growth spurt lol.

When you were too poor to even get a slush puppy... Thanks for bringing up all those horrible memories!

Kmart and goodwill was where my mother shopped for me and my siblings. The shopping at the mall was rare.

As an 80s kid, what I loved about Kmart were the less mainstream toys. The had an isle full of plastic model kits and supplies. No other big box store had this. They were only $5 or $6 and kept kept me quiet for days so my mom let me get one every trip to Kmart. Also the food counter had this weird smell like popcorn and potato wedges under a heat lamp. Let’s not forget those awful kids ride-on machines out front. I always regretted riding those.

I worked in the deli, cut 1/4" piece off top of my thumb using the slicer for onions. Sandwiches started going blur light at 8 pm and we closed at 10 pm. Enjoyed working there.

Yes, I miss the days as a kid smelling that popcorn. I used to go to this one K Mart that had an Orange-Pinapple Icee. So far, NO FLAVOR has topped that one.

My first full time job with benefits😂 camera and jewelry dept. many fond memories❤

I was sad when they finally closed the Outer Banks, NC location. It was a tradition to go every time we went there.

O I loved k Mart and also toys R Us just iconic and brings back the old days I always loved going as a kid.

I was sad when Kmart's distinctive taste value priced subs disappeared, they were a treat when I was a youngster that got their clothes from Kmart. One of my oldest daughter's 1st words was when she proudly announced Kmart when she saw the sign at age 3, 1992. Good kiddos got a trip thru the toy dept, I got worked over by 3 & 5yo females. Dad that's the new Barbie, dad has no cash, write a check dad, go to the ATM dad. Women get their shopping gene at birth. Good times!

Can someone bring back Kmart ❤the store miss it a lot. ❤❤❤❤😂

The Kmart I went to as a kid had its own little restaurant inside and I remember the taco salad was sooo good. Miss that damn salad. 😅

I remember 1988 going to K-Mart and my mom bought me some Beetlejuice action figures and a cherry icee

Great time...the hot dogs and popcorn were awesome on a budget

I remembered K-Mart in the 70's, living in Montebello, California, the one I remembered most was on Whittier Blvd. in East Los Angeles.

Now I wanna shop at Kmart. So thanks for that. 😆😆😆

In '79 I bought a red softball bat at Kmart and i still have it next to my front door 😊

Kmart was like a mash up of target and Walmart, they had a little of everything too