There used to be a store in Toronto that was famous for its “door buster” specials in the heart of the immigrant district of Toronto. Honest Ed’s as he went under than banner was one of those soup to nuts phenomenon of nature type outlets that was resembled something of a European fish market combined with a scenes from Jerry Lewis’s Whose Minding The Store. Some of his technique was based on taking absolute consumer necessities like bread, milk, and eggs and selling them at prices so absurd as to raise the ire of Ontario’s vigilant consumer price regulators.Why should the far,er have to dump surplus produce into the trash when ole’ Honest Ed Mirvish could hawk by the truckload. E.J. Korvette in New York was also a famous promoter in its hey-day especially when loose frogs, snakes, monkeys and Amazonian frogs tore loose from the unsupervised exotic pet department.
Liquitex Basics this weekend only at grab-it-while-you-can pricing
It’s hard to think of a name for the Madame Pickwick weekend sales: Thinking of something along the lines of Tallyrand being a piece of shit in a silk stocking fame mixed with Robespierre’s final entreaty before having from the neck up tumble into the finest hand woven basket that the hangman could procure. All this gave us a big zilch for an name. In the meantime the Saturday- Sunday special is Liquitex Basic Acrylic 4 oz tubes at $1.59. The product is in its second iteration; the first one was a sorry flop with product quality being an issue, but the new version is essentially a first in class for the medium quality acrylic paint with an adequate but restrained choice of colors that forces the painter to exercise some semblance of color mixing skills.
1963 — Jerry Lewis plays store clerk Norman Phiffier and Fritz Feld plays the manager of the gourmet foods section in the 1963 movie Who’s Minding the Store?. The Paramount film was directed by Frank Tashlin. —click image for source…
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…While the first E.J. Korvette store was located on 45th street in Manhattan, the first of the type of store I remember were opened in 1954 as the stores generally expanded into the suburbs. By 1956, they had six stores, and eventually they maxed out at around 58 stores. The thing I remember about the one I went to in the St. Louis area, was that it was a two story building with cashiers in individual departments like that of a department store. It also included a separate building which housed it’s own furniture store with commissioned salespeople. Their furniture store took and delivered custom furniture orders of high quality furniture. Korvette also included a full supermarket, a pharmacy and a large hardware department that even sold paneling. Their clothing was generally a better grade than found at other discount stores of the time as Korvette tried to compete with the department stores, but were never quite successful with the strategy. They also had a tire center and a leased pet department that I worked in. The pet departments located in Korvette’s sold full breed dogs, complete with papers. They also sold tropical fish, snakes, monkeys and tropical birds. On more than one occasion, there were monkeys and snakes that got loose and made their way around the store until they were caught. I don’t think the store managers were ever to fond of the pet department! Read More:http://retailrich.hubpages.com/hub/Reminiscing-Over-Old-Discount-Stores-From-The-Past
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