ACME Welcome Video!

Really great find on YouTube! A welcome video for new team members joining ACME. The video was made in the late 80's/very early 90's. Three stores were used for the video shoot and are listed in the final credits. They include Turnersville, Flourtown and Westtown. One of the stores has a very unusual décor package, which we'll just be able to see hints of down below.

The video starts off at Westtown with the red-oval logo on the storefront. Looking MUCH better than the block letter logo which would be swapped in a few years later. We also see the window signage which says "take a new look". This tagline was rolled out in the late 80's after that decade's remodels were mostly complete. This was also back in the day with ACME's extremely popular "percent off" sales. 

ACME's very distinct yellow carts seen here. 

Our first good interior view kicks off at Turnersville, I believe. This store was built with the 80's décor and has some variations from the remodeled stores. You can see here the whole produce wall is green, not just a stripe behind the department sign. 

As we continue, it gets a little harder to tell which store is in the video. Here we see the classic 80's front-end and registers. Notice NO checkout lights. ACME, for whatever reason, would not introduce those until the 90's Red/White/Blue package. 

A few shots of from the deil department with the distinct 80's stripes on the walls.

Checkout all the deil meat ready to be sliced! You don't see that often these days. Deli cases are now more display cases than functional delis. And to ACME's credit, one of the few chains to still offer custom-packaged deli salads! Even Wegmans gave up on that. 

Here we go! Some very odd décor seen here. Orange? Brown? We can also see some backlit photos just behind the employee's head down below. The floor does not appear to be the usual color either, although hard to tell with the limited view. 

Check out that back wall! Guessing it says "Wall of Savings" or maybe "Values". It is for sure the 80's font but black? Notice no checkerboard pattern in the aisle. Leads me to believe the 3 views above are from the Turnersville store. The photos from that store's post do indicate the checkerboard pattern did not go up and down the aisles. 

And two more views from the Turnersville store for sure. Again, a slight variation in the produce décor and salad bar sign. 

Fantastic view here! The likes we've never seen before. The 80's customer service setup, however, this is not how the CSR stand looked in most stores. It would have been completely separate from the photo and gifts counter. We DO see the safes, which for some bizarre reason, were moved out the office and into full view on the sales floor during the 80's remodel. The employee is wearing the red CSR vest, an indication to customers that this was the best person to go to for assistance. 

As the credits roll, we see the three stores that were used in the video. Both "Cross Keys" and Westtown are long closed now. 

"Cross Keys Shopping Center", Turnersville, NJ

Flourtown, PA

Westtown, PA

To watch the full video on YouTube, please click here. Thomspon TJ has a second ACME video on the channel which is certainly entertaining but does not include as good of interior views as this video does .

Flashback Fun!

Abandoned Super Fresh!

Location: 300 Commerce Circle, Bristol, PA

The one that started it all... the very first Bonus Store on the blog! I had come across it by accident and HAD to photograph it yet wasn't sure how to share it on the blog since I was so ACME-focused. Then it came to me.. it can be a bonus post!   

I managed to get really great interior photos where we see evidence of two decor packages. This store was eventually closed as A&P decided to focus on the Pathmark banner in the Philly market. With a Pathmark nearby, this Super Fresh was shut down.

To jump back to the original post, click here. 

TODAY >>>

No signs of Super Fresh on the interior but the exterior is largely preserved. 

The return of Skyline?

 (This is a recreation of the post I put up on Tuesday, where the text completely disappeared at some point. Possibly due to me having way too many windows open on my laptop, which is a terrible habit of mine!)

As I was looking through pictures of the beautifully remodeled Trolley Square store, I noticed this above one of the aisles. Now it's certainly not unusual for a grocery store to have products hanging above the aisles, but it is pretty unusual to use pegboard! Back in the 70's and 80's, ACME was pretty famous for using pegboards above ALL their aisles in their smaller stores. Back then, it was referred to as "skyline" and you could find the most random of items hanging here... dish towels, kitchen utensils, tools, hardware, sewing supplies, small toys (above the cereal aisle, of course), cotton balls, pet toys, coffee filters... the selection went on and on. I was pretty surprised to see this phenomenon return to the Trolley Square store. The pegboard has been finished off more attractively here with borders, which was not the case back in the day. 

Coincidenetly, ACME had an in-house brand back then called "Skyline". If my memory serves me correctly, this brand was used for HABA items, but may have spread over to other categories. The logo was made up of the fish-eye shape with "Skyline" in place of ACME. Again, my memory is a little foggy with all of this. I do seem to have a distinct memory of Skyline shampoo and can even see the entire bottle in my mind. I believe this branding died off when Acme switched over to Osco products in their HABA departments. I've scoured the internet for the logo or old products that had it and I have not been able to find any. If anyone has better memories of this era, please share in the comments! 

Flashback Fun!

REVIST NEWTON, NJ!

Location: 11 Nelson Street, Newton, New Jersey

Opened in October 1, 1957 and closed February 25, 2009. For additional coverage, please click here. 

ABANDONED >>>

REPURPOSED >>>

Dollar General opened in the front portion of the building in August 2012, with a Powerhouse Gym following later in the back of the building. 

Former ACME – Camden, New Jersey

ANOTHER GUEST POST FROM
THE MARKET REPORT!

(This was to be the first guest post, but I jumped the gun with the
Trolley Square store post, hence the introduction down below)

Location: 200 Marlton Ave, Camden, NJ

Hello, friends! This is Zachary from The Market Report, and Acme Style has graciously offered to let me guest-write about some of the stores I've photographed but not posted on my own blog. Today, let's check out this location in Camden — a seriously old-school former ACME, although that's about to change. More on that in a moment!

Let's first talk about the history of this store. It's just under 20,000 square feet, and was constructed by ACME back in 1954, according to Josh Austin. ACME stayed here for a few decades, closing on November 5, 1983. About two years later, a small Philadelphia chain called Cousin's moved in. All these years later, although Cousin's has kept up the place nicely, it's retained so much of its history. But that's about to change. Earlier this year, Cousin's sold this store to a small New Jersey chain called Universal Food Markets (which has a location just up the street), and they've rebranded it as Global Supermarket. They're about to embark on a major renovation of the space.

The entrance and exit are in the front-left corner of the store. You walk along the front, in front of the registers (that's almost definitely a quirk left over from ACME), to the first aisle on the right side of the store. That aisle has the meat and deli departments on the right side, and frozen foods on the left side. Produce lines the back wall, with dairy in the last aisle on the left side. The majority of that layout doesn't seem to me to be particularly similar to ACMEs of the 50s (see here), so it's likely Cousin's did some pretty substantial reorganization when they moved in. I would expect ACME to have had produce on this side, with dairy and frozen on the other.

One other thing I'm not certain of is whether this decor is at all left over from ACME. I suspect it's not. On the other hand, the lettering is nearly identical to what ACME was using in the 1970s, so it's possible Cousin's simply repainted it when they moved in. Global Supermarket has posted some renderings of what the store will look like after its remodel, and suffice it to say not much will look the same.

Rendering via Global Supermarket

I would also expect a 1970s ACME to have signage for Lancaster Brand Meats, which I don't see any evidence of here. You can compare the meat department signage with the Point Pleasant post linked above. On the other hand, the lettering here definitely looks older than 1985.

Rendering via Global Supermarket

It's not a common layout anymore to see produce on the back wall of the store, but a handful of 70s and 80s-era stores had a setup like that, including stores like Mayfair Foodtown. Global is going to flip dairy and produce, so produce is in what will become the first aisle on the left side and dairy is on the back wall.

You can barely see the produce lettering peeking out from behind the toilet paper! And while my belief is that the signage isn't left over from ACME, I suspect the soffit visible running along the ceiling definitely is.

Rendering via Global Supermarket

Clearly, the grocery shelving was installed post-ACME.

Rendering via Global Supermarket

And while I don't know for sure, I would suspect that this aisle was dairy and frozen in the ACME days. This is where Global will move the produce department.

Notice the "bakery" signage here, too. This store doesn't have a bakery these days and doesn't seem to have had one during Cousin's lifetime, so either that section used to have packaged baked goods, or it's left over from the ACME days

Rendering via Global Supermarket

The new produce department will be very different, according to these renderings. And it looks like they might move around some walls, possibly sacrificing backroom space for a larger produce area. This decor also appears in one of Universal's other locations, up in Rahway.

Rendering via Global Supermarket

A new customer service island will be built along the front-end here, it looks like.

It'll be interesting to see how this remodel comes out, and regardless, I'm glad we got to see inside before it's all updated. And for now, thanks to Acme Style for letting me come in for this guest post, and maybe I'll be back soon for another!