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I remember when ThinkGeek was in its hey day and often chortled on seeing some of the items on offer. It looks like there are some major changes under way. Their web site is moving under the web site of parent company GameStop. Physical store locations for ThinkGeek will remain open. Selected items will remain available in GameStop stores. Orders from ThinkGeek on or after June 13th, 2019 are final sales -- no returns.
As part of this transformation, there is currently a 50% off everything sale at https://www.thinkgeek.com/
I must confess I had not visited their site in years. What has your experience with them been like?
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Web Site thinkgeek.com Moving in with Parent Company GameStop
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Monday June 17 2019, @12:29PM (8 children)
Same. I don't think I bought anything from them for many MANY years. They used to have a lot of "geek" (or one should probably say computer nerd humor) shirts and such. I bought a few. I had a quick look now and it would appear that they really changed target audience to some other form of geekdom and popculture. I couldn't even find any of the funny UNIX-, Linux-, PERL, general computer nerd things anymore. Just a lot of japanese cartoon stuff, star wars everywhere and just general "crap". So even 50% off there is just nothing there I would want anymore.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 17 2019, @01:14PM (2 children)
Same here. They don't have any of the stuff I used to be interested in.
My guess is they brought in an MBA who had the brilliant idea to sell merchandise licensed from Hollywood because they could negotiate "graaate dealz." Except they alienated their audience segment with recycled, uninspired crap. There's not a single, edgy item in the 10-15 pages of goods I looked at just now. So, not only did they alienate their customers but they walked away from their core brand identity. That's a very bad idea in a very crowded consumer goods market.
Brand Identity and Differentiation are Business and Marketing 101 for a reason, and violating those rarely produces benefits.
It reminds me a bit of how Dice screwed the pooch with Slashdot's Beta.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday June 17 2019, @08:06PM
Fuck Beta!
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday June 17 2019, @10:36PM
I suspect you're right about the MBA.
Their homepage has a list of mainstream pop culture franchise logos on it, none of which have much to do with anything geeky to me.
Harry Potter is one of them, which just seems very dated.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday June 17 2019, @01:51PM
(Visits.)
Oh, looks like they replaced whoever grokked geeks with someone who's seen every episode of The Big Bang Theory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @02:10PM (1 child)
Anyone have any suggestions for other places to get good stuff?
I know of Maths Gear [mathsgear.co.uk] for some pretty cool stuff (very math-heavy, which is my interest, and not so much unix-oriented). Love the Hyberbola Clock [mathsgear.co.uk], for instance.
This used to be the great promise of the Web, where specialty places like that would proliferate, but that doesn't seem to be very common (or I haven't searched too hard). I suppose Think Geek used to be one of those places.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 18 2019, @11:50AM
I have had the same question a few times, but lately i'm coming around to another answer: make your own. there are a bunch of places online like cafe press where you can upload your own designs and they send you the finished article a few days later. that covers hats, t-shirts, mugs, etc. or you can watch a couple howto videos and make your own from scratch.
For more specialty items out of plastic or metal, casting them yourself or 3D printing them works. you don't have to cut a check to Hollywood, if it references a popular movie or show, so bonus. A couple years ago i made a really cool zombie mask with liquid latex and paper towels after watching some australian girl's how-to on YT.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday June 17 2019, @07:08PM
I just visited for the only item I bought from there: Bawls. No longer sold. No need to visit thinkgeek anymore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by steveg on Tuesday June 18 2019, @01:09PM
A few years ago, they sent me an email telling me what a great discount I could get if I used up my "Geek points". It would require that I buy a certain amount of stuff. Since ThinkGeek T-shirts had formed such a large part of my wardrobe in the past, I was willing to give it a try.
Couldn't find anything. Just media related items, no Linux stuff, no science stuff. What little that was actually interesting in their online catalog was all sold out.
Haven't been back.