D&D General The Disappearance of D&D from Mainstream Retailers

[MGibster]

I'm old, but I'm not that old, so I don't really know where people were buying D&D back in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, AD&D products were available through mainstream retailers. You could go to the mall and find AD&D books at Kaybee Toy, B. Dalton Booksellers, and I don't know if Sears carried it in their stores but you could get it via the Sears catalog. I'm pretty sure I got my copy of Keep on the Borderlands at a Kaybee Toy store at the Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs circa 1986. I think it was on clearance.

At some point, AD&D was no longer at places like Kaybee Toys and you had to rely on boutique hobby shops to get your RPGs. I remember seeing RPGs at B.Dalton, but their stock was sporadic, and I had to rely on Lone Star Comics for my games. While I suspect Satanic Panic had something to do with retaillers of AD&D, I can't help but think it was more complicated than that. Switching to boutique stores was a business decision. Anyone know why?

This changed with D&D 3rd edition when you could find the three core books at Target and these days you can find 5th edition at Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon (of course), and probably more places I don't show. What changed to make those viable retail outlets when they weren't in 1989? (Amazon didn't exist of course.)

 

[Deset Gled]

I'm no Ben Riggs, so I don't have any numbers to back me up. But it sounds like the time frame you're describing generally corresponds with the downfall of TSR. Moving into the 90s, TTRPGs sales were generally going downhill. And, to make matters worse, sales were decentralizing; there were more and more books from TSR fracturing the D&D market, as well as other games like Vampire and Palladium taking market share. This meant retailers couldn't just stock the core D&D books, they had to diversify. And that's not really a thing the big retailers wanted to do in the face of shrinking sales.

Noting that basic trend, the shift to boutique stores seems pretty natural. I'm fairly sure you could tell a similar story about comics, as well. They were also a boutique item in the 90s.

3e, of course, revitalized the market. It also focused sales on the core books and brought randomized minis. But if you want to start really getting into retail sales of D&D post 3e, you're going to quickly get into discussion of the rapidly changing brick-and-mortar existence in a post-internet landscape, where factors like the rise of Amazon and the fall of Borders and Toys-R-Us write the story and D&D is just along for the ride.

 

[payn]

I'd guess gaming generally has exploded in the last 20 years. Board games, card games, RPGs, you name it. I think publishers have gotten better about intro products and such too. I dont ever see all the products at Target or Wal-mart, usually just that starter set. There is a nostalgia binge on right now too with all the reboots and remakes. D&D finally fits a product worth selling outside boutique gaming shops.

 

[Parmandur]

It was the Satanic Panic: a lot of mainstream retailers didn't want to court controversy, so they stopped stocking D&D.

 

[sevenbastard]

Toys R Us was the place we bought D&D in the 1980s. But we also had a few small Independent bookstores that had stocks of Books, dice and miniatures. By the 90s it was Walden or B Daltons ( can't remember which) and one local toy story and some comic shops. Eventually a Barnes and Noble opened.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Edit: nevermind.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'm old, but I'm not that old, so I don't really know where people were buying D&D back in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, AD&D products were available through mainstream retailers. You could go to the mall and find AD&D books at Kaybee Toy, B. Dalton Booksellers, and I don't know if Sears carried it in their stores but you could get it via the Sears catalog. I'm pretty sure I got my copy of Keep on the Borderlands at a Kaybee Toy store at the Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs circa 1986. I think it was on clearance.

At some point, AD&D was no longer at places like Kaybee Toys and you had to rely on boutique hobby shops to get your RPGs. I remember seeing RPGs at B.Dalton, but their stock was sporadic, and I had to rely on Lone Star Comics for my games. While I suspect Satanic Panic had something to do with retaillers of AD&D, I can't help but think it was more complicated than that. Switching to boutique stores was a business decision. Anyone know why?

This changed with D&D 3rd edition when you could find the three core books at Target and these days you can find 5th edition at Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon (of course), and probably more places I don't show. What changed to make those viable retail outlets when they weren't in 1989? (Amazon didn't exist of course.)

Well, I think one thing is that TSR fantasy novels became really popular during that time and those were all over bookstores of the era. But as a toy, I think D&D had its chance and then the panic hit and those retailers at the time (Sears, Kaybee, etc) reevaluated but more importantly I don’t recall them replacing D&D books with other books, like say comics, either. It just seemed like the door got shut.

When TSR sold to WotC and more importantly, when WotC became Hasbro’s, now there it was owned by a major toy company that had more inroads back into those retailers. Better account reps, executives who knew the people they needed to talk to get their product back on shelves.

Just my guess.

 

[bloodtide]

Well....this is a LOT more Bookselling back in the Time Before Time.

First a lot of D&D was sold by mail. Even if you lived by seven malls and eleven bookstores it could be impossible to find a single individual D&D item. You wanted to buy The Shady Dragon Inn...go to 18 stores and don't find a single copy. So, for many it was just easier to mail order. And this was even more true for Dragon and Dungeon.

A lot of D&D was also sold in the game/comic/collector stores.

Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, and KB Toys were primary Mall Stores. ( I lived one town over from a Waldenbooks that was oddly in a shopping center....the only one I have ever seen.) As mall stores they had extremely limited inventory space. Really extreme. The big things for the bookstores were the 'top popular' books...really that is what they were there for. So and so put out a new book...they'd have like 50 copies. Then like calendars and cook books and self help books. But for anything else...well, they sure did not want a box of books, they wanted five at the most. Remember they had roughly zero space. D&D was way, way, way, way down at the bottom of the list....like under coloring books. The bookstores did not want much D&D stuff as they had no space...and it was not a big seller. D&D books tended to sit on the shelf forever.

Nothing really matches the amazing smorgasbord of random RPG stuff you could find at a typical mall books store in the 80's and 90's. Pure paper chaos, with some shrink wrap.

KB Toys had the near same issue. No room. They stocked plenty of 'common toys', but their main focus was the 'hot fun new popular toys'. D&D just barley counted as a "game" to the toy store. Few even carried a couple books...and even then only before x-mas.

The only time Sears only had a small D&D selection I've seen was right before x-mas when they would make a special 'games and toy section' out of the home and garden area.

Of course.....D&D books were top tier items to be stolen from mall stores...so it was common for a store to just not carry them. And even putting the books behind the counter would not deter an 80/90's mallrat. The food court mafia always had D&D books to sell.....

And this was on top of the TSR problems. And they had a lot of them. Some how, they would send tons of books to some areas...and few or none to others.

And just for another thing. A LOT of the 90's D&D stuff was boxed sets. Not "books". So this pushed them out of the 'book' category and into the 'game' category. And most of the books stores only wanted 'game boxes' around x-mas.

The non mall small independent bookstores often had a much better RPG section...often a large section. But not being in a mall did give them a LOT more room. For years my local Deluxe honkeytonk feed store beer bait barbecue gun shop taxidermist laundromat had a Village Book Smith with a TON of RPG stuff. Right next to the VCR rentals where you could rent plain black boxes of tapes with labels written in marker like 'The Star Wars', 'Indy Jones Movie' and 'the Alien Movie'.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Nothing really matches the amazing smorgasbord of random RPG stuff you could find at a typical mall books store in the 80's and 90's. Pure paper chaos, with some shrink wrap.

I really miss this.

This thread brings back a lot of memories.

I still remember getting my Basic D&D red box (Mentzer) at a big toy store when I was 11.

There it was, magically waiting for me in the middle of one of those enormous walls of toys and games.

 

[aco175]

We had a regional store called the Fair which is a bit like Ames or Kmart back in the 80s. It had books and some of the other stuff. Every month or so my father would take us to the city and we could go to Fabulous Fiction Bok Store. They had a lot more including more dice and minis and modules. Happy times.