[quote name='bookishboy']Funcoland at the Mid-State Mall, Rt 18 Northbound, in East Brunswick NJ
Strangely, it's in the exact same strip-mall as the Gamestop there, because both were already there before Funcoland was bought. I have a feeling that the continued presence of both stores in the same location is a function of lease obligations more than anything else. I would not be suprised to see one of them (probably Funcoland) be eliminated when it next comes up for lease renewal.
This all resulted as a rebound effect from a failed warehoue/distrobution acquisition on the part of Barnes and Noble.
B&N was planning on buying Ingram, Inc, its largest supplier of warehousing/wholesaling services....if I remember, the purchase price was going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 million. The FTC kind of stopped it though, because Ingram also provided services to the competition, most noticeably Borders/Waldenbooks. The FTC investigations into the proposed merger didn't absolutely block the merger, but they made it clear enough that they would require that the move would be monitored very closely, to the point where the acquisition would be more of a hinderance than a benefit to the company. So, B&N backed away from the deal, and used some of the funds to instead increase its holdings in the software retailer division.....they already owned the chains Babbages, Super Software, Software Etc. They bought Funcoland, and I think this is about the same time that "Gamestop" popped up onto the grid. I think that "Gamestop" is the ultimate brand-name that the other chains are being aimed to be merged into. After all, this is the one with the greatest web-presence. If you search for "Gamestop" stores near you on the website, you will still find some Funcoland stores in some areas.
B&N also owns B Dalton, and Ink newsstands.
As an aside, even though Funcoland is still there, it doesn't feel like the same place. Back in the day, it used to really be the only store chain that dealt with used games. I have fond memories of stopping by, picking up the current copy of their newsprint-style weekly listing, and browsing the used prices for SNES and Genesis games, and even prices for new-fangled systems like the Playstation and Saturn. The world-wide-web was out there, at this point, but Funcoland certainly hadn't taken advantage of it's ability to do wide-scale sales. Once other chains started carrying used games as well with standardized pricing, and websites like EBGames and Gamestop.com started rising, well, Funcoland "as we knew and loved it" just sort of died a quiet death.[/quote]
Your story is right, but something's wrong.. Waldenbooks used to or currently owns Software Etc (now Gamestop).. either B&N owns Walden, or its Walden that did all this.. I think.