- Boots
- WHSmith
- Woolworth's
Woolworth's famously bit the dust in 2009, and it was like a national scandal, as these stores had been prolific in virtually every city and town in the UK, for many many decades. They seemed to sell... everything. You could go in there and come out with rawlplugs, a 7 inch single, a pair of stockings and a bag of sweets.
Oh yes, the thing to note here is that all the names in this '8-bit trinity' used to sell music back in the day. Vinyl, cassette and CD. Woolworths seemed to be the cheapest and most kid/teen-friendly, so it'd be the place to see the top 40 all on shelves. It died out by the end of the 1990s.
I think, with these shops selling pop music, that they believed the home computing trend of the 1980s would be something they could easily turn their hand to, and yeah, they did alright at this. Woolworths was commonly stocked with budget games, mostly from Mastertronic's labels, as they had a good working relationship with the chain. I cannot ever remember buying a full price game from Woolworths, I tended to pick them up from Boots on the rare occasions I had enough money to get one!
My local branch, at some point in 1989, suddenly put a load of old games from some years back at discounted prices. Mostly CRL and Melbourne House releases. I got my mum to buy me CRL's 18-rated Jack The Ripper. (I was awful at it, so didn't see much in the way of gore.) I have no idea why they had so many of these that must have been sitting gathering some dust in a stock room. By the time they were put on shelves for a cheap sale, it was like the kind of thing you'd have cluttering up a Crash covertape.
WHSmith
I never had a WHSmith in my town back in the 1980s, as there was a big independent newsagent in the shopping centre that filled the same role. In the mid-1990s, it got replaced by WHSmith. Of course, we'd see WHSmith's on our travels, over in neighbouring towns and in London.
I think I'd be right in saying they actually sold home computers in the early 1980s, but I'm not sure on that one.
The disappointing thing about WHSmith's is they tended to price their games higher than everyone else, and the choice wasn't that wide.
These days the way they turn a profit, is by the shops they have at service station, railway stations and airports, which are significantly more expensive than the town branches for things like soft drinks and snacks. It's been keeping the chain afloat these past few years, along with the ridiculous insistence of offering each newspaper customer a £1 bottle of mineral water or a huge slab of Cadbury's chocolate.
Boots
As I previously mentioned, this was my preference. It had the biggest amount of stock, with full price and budget games in plentiful supply, along with weekly charts. I can say with some certainty they sold home computers in the early 1980s, it was probably the place where I first tried a ZX Spectrum.
Also, another anachronism from those days, was how popular it would be to get your photos developed. The computer games were placed pretty close to the photo labs and the top 40 singles. You can't imagine the modern day Boots being involved in that business today.
Have I got it right? Are there other big name chains deserving of a mention?