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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thedungeondelver" data-source="post: 3819860" data-attributes="member: 34865">Quoted for truth, my friend.My first ADVANCED D&D hardbacks came from a TG&Y (it wasn't until years later that I got the joke that some of the older guys I played D&D with were constantly cracking - "Shopping at the TZGY"), a generic department store.  Come to think of it, so did my BASIC DUNGEONS & DRAGONS boxed set.  My copy of the EXPERT SET came from a Sears outlet store - couple of funny stories about that place: the merchandise at outlet stores, or at least this one, consisted of overstock, discontinued items or returned repaired items (like electronics) so it was basically a scratch-and-dent shop.  You could also have catalog orders delivered there instead of your house.  The three D&D things of interest I ever saw there was the noted expert set which had apparently been cobbled together out of whatever was handy when some of the boxes got opened; this set was taped shut and when I got it home it had an open, half-used pack of Quadrille graph paper, the rulebook, dice & crayon and two copies of X1 ISLE OF DREAD!  They also had a copy of the Mattel DUNGEONS & DRAGONS electronic board game (which I have never played), and a case of the handheld D&D LCD games (essentially a 3d graphical hunt-the-wumpus).  This latter item was interesting because I opened one to play with it, and to my dismay, the LCD screen had been smashed - not cracked, but smashed in the middle.  If the impact shape was anything to go by, someone very deliberately took a screwdriver and drove it point-first into the LCD.  I tried the second one.  Same thing.  Then the third.  Then the fourth, and so on.  The case of eight had been destroyed.  I can just see some zealot freight handler or stockboy at a Sears store surreptitiously working through a shipment of D&D LCD games making sure the PURE EVIL of an LCD game branded with the logo didn't go on to corrupt the hands and minds of children everywhere...Sorry.  Anyway...My copy of A1 SLAVE PITS OF THE UNDERCITY was purchased at a Zayre's; I recall the mess (literal mess - the toy department in late Zayer's stores were pretty much their second-highest shrink area because even during Christmas they were essentially unmanned) of D&D books there....I don't see anywhere near this degree of market penetration any more.  I just don't.  Hasbro owns a huge slice of the US toy market - why don't I see the core books and modules in J.C. Penney's and Sears and KMart and so on?I keep hearing about the dreadful condition "hobby games" are in and how this many stores closed and that many retailers are going to online only and so on and so forth but where's the big push?  C'mon, you gotta spend money to make it.</blockquote>

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