It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why more and more local stores are going defunct. A short trip downtown makes the destructive nature of Amazon et al. apparent: the city centre is littered with for-sale or for-rent signs, stuck on dirty windows of almost every third building.

In 2024, I already wrote about the challenges of buying games locally, but now that we have two kids, I think about this more often. Yes, it’s annoying for myself, but no, it’s not a big deal: physical editions of rarer Nintendo Switch games or retro video games aren’t available locally anyway. But what about buying the kids a simple box of LEGO? Even that’s not possible anymore. And to me, that’s very sad.

When my wife was little, her parents would take her out to the centre on Christmas eve where she could choose a little present for herself. None of the toy shops she used to frequent with her folks back in the day are still in business. None of them. So we can’t offer the same thing to our kids: we’d have to drive further—to a bigger supermarket with a toy region, or to a chain store. And to me, that’s very sad.

The evolution of types of stores in our local city centre from small, independent, and varied to big names and nothing but shoes, boutique clothing, or €10 counterfeit made-in-China watches is a curious phenomena. That got me thinking: In which stores was I a (regular) customer, what kind of toy did I buy there, and which of these businesses are still selling stuff today?

• Christiaensen: a Belgian toy store chain from the seventies and eighties that got bought out by the Dutch Blokker: see the Jeugdsentiment nostalgia: Christiaensen post. I bought Stratego Legends there when I was 16.

• Bart Smit: a Dutch toy store chain that got bankrupt and bought by Intertoys/Maxitoys. The Christiaensen store got converted into a Bart Smit that now is yet another empty building. I bought too many Nintendo GB(A)/(3)DS games there and was a regular for over a decade. Every time we went shopping, I just had to drop in and see what’s on sale: they would regularly slash prices so you had to be quick. At one time, there were three Bart Smit stores in Hasselt. I even remember being gifted the MegaDrive cart Toejam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron by my grandparents somewhere in the nineties. Whether you fancied a video game or a LEGO box, Bart Smit was the go-to solution for almost every Flemish/Dutch kid. That building now is yet another boring clothes store.
• DreamLand: another toy store chain with venerable Belgian roots owned by Colruyt group that briefly had a fancy underground store near a new parking lot not even five years ago. Of course it had to go. I bought The Quest for El Dorado and other board games there, and I think we also bought baby toys for our daughter there. The bigger store about 30 km away from us recently also closed down. The store chain is still alive as is their webshop, but for how long… There’s still a DreamLand nearby but no longer in the centre.
• Free Record Shop: a Dutch retailer that primarily sold music CDs and boomed during the nineties. The one in Sint-Truiden also had a second hand selection that included GBA/DS games. Good times… Free Record Shop was declared bankrupt in 2013. I bought several albums and every good handheld game I could there.
• Fnac: a French retail chain with a long history that never made it to our city: we used to drop by when visiting Leuven. They usually are more expensive than the above alternatives. In 2020 they finally opened a shop in Hasselt. Since a month, it’s for rent. Yup. I bought a few puzzle games, picture books, and audio CDs there.
• Broux: a renowned local model building specialist my late father in law loved. I think by now you can guess its fate. I’m not big into the hobby but tagged along once and got myself some kind of fighter jet. I never finished it.
• Game Mania: the local Game Stop that used to have more than 30 stores across Belgium. I loved its early location at the outskirts of our village, conveniently placed close to a road I passed when cycling home from high school. I convinced my sister to help finance the silver GameCube plus Wind Waker and Super Mario Sunshine. Best purchase ever. They usually were (at least) €10 pricier than supermarket/online competitors but I didn’t care and just wanted to support them. This is also where I got my original Paper Mario 2 edition for the painful full price of €60 (that was even more painful in 2004). I guess that didn’t work out: yet another bankruptcy. The local Game Mania store moved buildings twice before being gone in 2024¹.
• Moderna: a specialised toy store in Heusden my wife’s parents loved to go to; one of the few small family-owned stores. Her SNES and Game Boy were bought there. The stock they had was different enough from other nearby toy stores to warrant a small detour. It was later bought out by chain store Fun.
• Fun: Another Belgian toy store chain with a long history that ended in 2024 with a bankruptcy. A few of their stores were taken over by DreamLand and ToyChamp (the ones that bought Bart Smit).

There are two remarkable exceptions to this bleakness: comic book store Wonderland and board game specialist Oberonn. Both stores are not a part of some bigger holding and both stores stem from my youth and are still alive and kicking. In fact, they used to compete: in high school I used to buy new Magic: The Gathering (MtG) booster packs from the opened box at the counter top in Wonderland while Oberonn even sold singles in binders. The last time I visited Wonderland I learned they stopped selling MtG as not to clash with Oberonn.

Local Christian youth association shop De Banier not only sells outfits but also creative trinkets for crafting and has a small board game selection. Strange, as that’s only 30 metres away from Oberonn—and usually a bit less expensive. They still exist but they recently meddled with their opening hours, shortening the time span. Hopefully that’s not a bad sign… We bought many of our favourite games there and my wife always finds some kind of jewellery making toolkit in there as well.

I hope one day a Pipoos store finds its way to Hasselt as well. We thought the one in Maastricht was gone but it seems that they simply moved instead.

braindump   hasselt