Trash Eighties: Radio Shack's Golden Years
If you grew up in a time or a place without Radio Shack, you may have to sit most of this one out, because it’s going to be really nothing more than a fond look back at this flawed but ever-present and sometimes pioneering technology retailer.
Most US readers at least probably do remember though the “Radio Shack of the Mall” — the 1990’s-and-beyond version of the store that sold (or attempted to sell) cellphones, accessories, toys, pricey USB cables, and various consumer electronics devices.
While these years of the company saw the most stores in operation and highest gross revenue (but unfortunately not profit), most who were around for the decades that preceded this would argue that the true pinnacle years for the company came then.
I didn’t spend a lot of time in Radio Shack in the 1990s or 2000s. It was kind of depressing for me, I felt it was basically a shadow of its former self. And when it went bankrupt in 2015, I wasn’t particularly upset. The reason was I, and most of the world, had long since moved on from Radio Shack by then, finding cheaper and better places to shop.
