Once upon a time, Big Kmarts were everywhere, but now there's only one left in the entire world (and presumably the universe). I have good memories of wandering through those stores. As a kid, I'd roam the aisles while my grandmother waited for her prescription to be filled, checking out the games, the toys, and anything else that caught my eye. The last thing I ever bought from Kmart was a bag of candy to sneak into the movie theater, 'cause I ain't payin' for theater candy. At the end of the day, they were just a soulless business, but I did meet Santa there once, and he taught me that Alabama only has four different letters in its name. I don't know where I'm going with this. I also had a dream once that there was a tiny Kmart under a street that harassed people who went by. "And when you're down here, Georgie, you'll be lovin' these prices too."
Phronemophobia
Kmart was no more or less different to me than Target or a less kid-centered ToysЯUs. As a child, we had a Kmart near where my great grandmother lived and while it was a bit of a drive to reach it, we didn't have an alternative until a Wal-Mart showed up years later just down the street from my home. I can vaguely recall one unique part of the layout... the electronics section was in the middle of the building and had these temporary walls built around it with games and... um, electronics (duh) shelved on them with a relatively small checkout desk in the center and only one entrance, so the whole thing felt like a tiny store inside of a larger one. One side had a floor shelving with all the games and consoles while the opposite side had a floor shelving phones, stereos, VCRs, and TVs. I did wander to the toys section, but it was as you would assume - blue sections with boys stuff and pink sections with girly stuff. Typical set up. Outside of that, I remember there being a bunch of junk piled around the end of the line of checkout registers that were available but usually ignored unless the store was extremely busy and it had an arcade of Kung-Fu Heroes that I wanted to play but couldn't cause mom and dad didn't want to give me any money to waste on it. I later saw the game for the NES at the video shop we would visit on the weekends aptly named "VIDEO" and I got mom to rent it for me. I thought it was so cool to play an at-home version of an arcade game because that was always amazing to my kid brain and I eventually added a cartridge of it to my decaying library of old-stuff-you-might-as-well-emulate-instead for no better reason than that single moment of not-so-interesting nostalgia.
Bertn1991
That kind of sounds like one of the stores we had. I know one had the whole store within a store thing for the gaming and electronics stuff. Of course, they didn't have those glorious NES games by the time I came along. I didn't experience that system until Animal Crossing for the GameCube came out. Thank you for the precious retail memories. Nothing beats Toys [backwards R] Us for me. It was always straight to the Legos. Good times.