Laurel Mall In The 90's

Laurel Mall
Hazleton, PA (1994)
This photo was taken at the center of the Laurel Mall after it was remodeled in Fall 1994.  The short black wall in the center of the photo surrounded the escalator that lead downstairs to the covered parking lot.  Today, there is an elevator and a set of stairs.  Victoria's Candy and Auntie Anne's Pretzels are still in the mall today, but in different locations.

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (October 13, 1994)

The Birth Of The Laurel Mall

Laurel Mall construction
Hazleton, PA  (1971)
These photos were taken by Bill Snyder from his front yard on the beltway when they were building the Laurel Mall.

The Ghost Of Black Friday's Past

Crucible Of Terror
Goodtimes Home Video (1971)
I picked this tape up from the VHS wall at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater over the weekend.  The first thing that I noticed was the fact that it was released by Goodtimes.  This is generally a red flag for tape collectors as they were notorious for putting out a poor quality product, but the Zayre price sticker on the cellophane caught my eye.

Standard Speaker - July 28, 1989

Zayre's was a discount department store chain that operated in the eastern United States from 1956 to 1990.  The Zayre's in my hometown was the west end anchor store in the Laurel Mall from 1973 to 1989.  My grandparents usually stopped in this store when they brought me to the mall when I was a kid.  That, combined with the fact that Zayre's disappeared when I was nine years old when the chain was purchased by Ames, are the reasons that the store is one of the things that I associate with my childhood in the 80's.

I flipped the Crucible Of Terror box over to read the description of the movie and was surprised to find that the original sales receipt was slipped into the cellophane on the back.

The receipt is from Zayre Store #240.  So far, I haven't been able to find out which city had Store #240, but the date of November 28'th, 1987 shows that it was purchased for $5.99 on the day after Thanksgiving.  This could possibly have been a gift that someone purchased while they were doing their Black Friday shopping.

Citizen's Voice - October 24, 1987

The closest Zayre's sales circular that I could find to the date that this movie was purchased was a newspaper insert that went out one week before Halloween, and this tape is listed as one of the items available for sale.

The Crucible Of Terror tape was part of a collection of horror movies that they were selling for $5.99.  The other movies named in the circular are Little Shop Of Horrors, Night Of The Living Dead, Horror Express, Alice Sweet Alice, and Psychomania.

The tape played about as well as I could have hoped from a Goodtimes release.  Most of their VHS releases that I've come across use as little tape as possible to fit the film in either LP or SLP speed, so there's a ton of static and tracking issues throughout the entire movie.  These tapes usually played like crap when they were brand new in the 80's and 90's, so I'm amazed that this copy of Crucible Of Terror that is almost forty years old played as well as it did.

 

I was going to encode it to share, but Flick Vault has already uploaded it with a much sharper picture quality.  It's a pretty good movie about a psychotic artist.  Click here or click play above to watch it.

Rediscovering The Bomb

The Market: Antiques, Crafts, and Collectibles
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA
This store opened in the Laurel Mall in October 2024, but this was my first time stopping by.  It's sort of like Black Diamond or the Slatington Marketplace, but on a much smaller scale.  It's made up of vendors who rent space to display their merchandise, all of which you pay for at a single cash register in the middle of the store.

One of the things that I'm always on the lookout for in places like this are Garbage Pail Kids; specifically the ones that came out when I was a kid in the mid to late 80's.  These are getting pretty hard to find these days.  Topps brought the product line back in 2003, and they've produced dozens of different series over the past twenty years.  The new ones are alright, but I really don't have much interest in collecting these sets other than to buy the occasional sticker, like the ones that spoofed Bryce Harper and Joe Bob Briggs.

One of the vendors had a sign to announce to customers that they had Garbage Pail Kids for sale.  They were kept in three-ring binders in a locked case so I couldn't immediately see what they were, but based on the Funko Pop toys and other merchandise near the sign, I thought that the cards they had were probably from the 2000's.  But, I thought "what the hell" and asked the man at the cash register to unlock the case so that I could take a look at what they had, and I'm very glad that I did.

Not only did they have a good selection of Garbage Pail Kids from the 80's, but many of them were from Series 1 and 2 which I almost never find outside of a card show.  And right there in the center of the first page of the binder of cards was the holy grail: Sticker #8a - Adam Bomb.  It wasn't in gem mint condition, but I've never been picky about that sort of thing.  As long as the card isn't wrecked and the price is fair for the shape that the card is in, I'm in.  This one checked both of those boxes, so for the first time since the six year old me foolishly peeled this sticker and stuck it on the swing set in my grandparents back yard, I am the proud owner of the flagship card in the Garbage Pail Kids series.

I ended up getting these four cards from Series One and about a half dozen others from Series Two.  None of them are in fantastic condition, but you really couldn't beat the price.  The Geeky Gary card was 99 cents. There are ones on eBay right now in worse shape than this one that are selling for over ten bucks.  I don't think I'd ever pay collectors prices for these, but it's kind of fun to try to put together a full set just on what happens to pop up at yard sales, flea markets, and places like this store in the Laurel Mall.

Caffe Europa and the Infinite Pizza

Caffe Europa
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA

This place has been in business in the Laurel Mall for nearly 20 years and they're still one of the best places in town to stop for a coffee or a slice of pizza.

Caffe Europa is our go-to spot when my wife and I are going to see two movies at the Regal Theater outside the mall when we have a little time to kill between movies.  These pictures were taken on Monday after we had seen Venom: The Last Dance as we were waiting for the next screening of Heretic.

There's plenty of seating here, and the place has an aesthetic that makes me think of what a pizza parlor from a mid 90's Smashing Pumpkins video might look like.  The pizza oven with the blue swirls and the star and moon remind me of the Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness album every time I see it.

 

I had two slices of pepperoni and sausage pizza, and my wife had two slices of three cheese pizza, which is one of the pies that they make without sauce.  Both were delicious.

Two Guys From Italy and The Lickity Whip

During our last visit to The Slatington Marketplace, I found this item and it immediately brought back a memory that I hadn't thought about in years.  It's one of those three-sided cardboard stands that are often sitting next to the salt and pepper shaker on the tables at a diner or restaurant.  This one is an advertisement for a whipped fruit drink called Lickity Whip.

There were three different flavors pictured on this tabletop display: Strawberry Colada, Pina Colada, and Orange Cream.  I'm not sure if there were any other flavors or any other products in the Lickity Whip line because I could find no record of this brand name online.  I even checked the United States Patent and Trademark Office website because the logo has the little ™ symbol next to it, but I wasn't able to find any results even when looking through the cancelled or abandoned registered trademarks.  Nevertheless, I am positive that this was a real product because I remember exactly where I had them.

Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA  (July 12, 1987)

When I was a kid, the Laurel Mall in Hazleton, PA had a pizza parlor called Two Guys From Italy.  This article from the Standard Speaker had the only picture I could find of the restaurant, and it's far from ideal.  It was written about a dispute between the restaurant's owners and mall management.  The restaurant had come to an agreement on an extension to lease their spot in the Laurel Mall, but the mall management had second thoughts and decided to give that spot to a different restaurant called Dino's Pizza.  When Two Guys From Italy refused to close their doors, Laurel Mall management erected a giant wall around the front of the entrance with a sign on it informing shoppers that this would soon be a Dino's Pizza establishment.

I'm hoping to find better pictures of Two Guys From Italy because the place had a very cool vibe.  It had a brick storefront with a glass door to enter the restaurant, and an arched pick-up window where you could grab your pizza from the main concourse of the mall without having to go inside.  I believe that the inside of the restaurant had a bar, but I can't be sure about that.  I am sure that they had a large dining room with tables and booths, and that this Lickity Whip standee was sitting on each of them.

My grandfather and I stopped here to grab a slice of pizza from time to time when I was a kid.  Coconut was one of my favorite flavors, and I asked him if I could have a Pina Colada when I first noticed the picture on the table during one of our visits.  I remember that he checked with the waitress to make sure that they had a non-alcoholic version.  She confirmed that it was just a fruit drink and that it didn't come with alcohol, and it became my beverage of choice every time we stopped at Two Guys From Italy ever since.  It been well over thirty years since I last had one, but I think that it reminded me at the time of an Orange Julius, only made with pineapple and coconut instead of oranges.  They did have an Orange Cream flavor that I'm guessing was the Lickity Split version of an Orange Julius, and they had a Strawberry Colada too, but I never had either of those.

Breakfast From The Quik Bunny

Nesquik Cocoa Crush Cereal

Nestle (2023)
For quite a few years, I worked for the consumer relations team of Nestle USA Confections, Baking and Ice Cream, which was known internally as Nestle CBI.  The divisions got shuffled up a bit during my time there, so by the time I left the company, I was the consumer relations trainer for Nestle West, which was comprised of four product divisions: confections, beverages, ice cream and international brands.

The International Brands division was kind of a catch-all for brands and products that Nestle produced in other countries which were imported to the United States due to high consumer demand, such as Maggi seasonings, Nescafe coffee, and Quality Street chocolates.  However, this division didn't include every foreign-born product that the company made.  For example, Nestle was heavily involved with breakfast cereal overseas throughout my time with the company, but the product line wasn't a part of their International Brands portfolio.  It's not impossible to buy Nestle breakfast cereal in the US, but it's not something that the company itself has any role in importing or marketing here in the States, so you can only really find it in stores that specialize in foreign products.

One such store has recently opened in the old GameStop location in the Laurel Mall in Hazleton, PA.  It's called NEPA Exotic Snax, and they have a great selection of snack foods and beverages that you can't get in a typical grocery store in the United States.  One of the products that they had was Nesquik Cereal, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to give it a try.

From the photos that I've found of this cereal online, it seems as if there are a few different versions of Nesquik Cereal.  The one that was available at this store was called Nesquik Cocoa Crush, which are little crunchy chocolate squares that are filled with chocolate cream.  It's a pretty tasty cereal.  It's not quite as sweet as I was expecting it to be, but that's probably a good thing.  With all of the weight that I've put on over the past five years, the last thing that I need is more sugar.

 

If you live in the United States and you want to try Nesquik Cereal, but you don't have a specialty import shop in your neighborhood, I may have a solution for you.  Kellogg's has a line of breakfast cereals in their lineup called Krave, and one of their flavors is Double Chocolate Brownie Batter.  I haven't tried it yet so I can't confirm that they taste the same, but it's not uncommon for the rights to one product being split between multiple companies depending on which country you're in.  For example, here in the United States, Kit Kat bars are a Hershey product, but if you go anywhere else in the world, you'll find that Kit Kat bars are made by Nestle.  I'm not sure if something similar is going on with this breakfast cereal formula, but it sure looks like that could be the case.

The Extreme Game Store At The Laurel Mall

The Game Store
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA

Today is the birthday of ECW legend Stevie Richards.  The 51 year old who once led the Blue World Order can be seen in some of the most iconic moments in the history of Extreme Championship Wrestling.  He also did a television commercial for a place that I worked when I was a teenager in the late 90's.

For a short time in the late 90's, the spot in the Laurel Mall in Hazleton, PA where the Aladdin's Castle arcade once stood was occupied by The Game Store.  I was pretty excited to get the job, but that feeling wore off pretty quickly.  It ended up being one of the most boring jobs I've ever had, mostly due to the fact that there were hardly any customers.  It was easy to understand why that was the case when you looked at our shelves.  The K-Mart across the mall had a better selection of games, and they were charging less for new titles than we were charging for used games.  I remember one day that I bought a Game Boy Color at the end of my shift, and I'm pretty sure it was the first sale that the store made that day.  The store in the Laurel Mall didn't last too long, but thanks to Big Stevie Cool and old VHS recordings, it won't be forgotten.

Aladdin's Castle In 1987

Aladdin's Castle
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA

This arcade was one of my favorite places in the world when I was a kid.  Every time my grandparents and I went to the Laurel Mall, grandpa would give me a few quarters from the little black change pouch that he carried around everywhere he went, and I'd go in and play some games.  In the early to mid 80's, my favorite games to play there were Jungle Hunt, Discs Of Tron, Pac Man, Crossbow, Bagman, and the Star Wars games, but my all-time favorite was Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom.  I could make a quarter last a pretty long time on that machine.

The Laurel Mall was expanded and remodeled in the 90's, so I can't say for sure if I have this right.  However, I'd say that I'm 90% sure that the Aladdin's Castle location in the mall is now occupied by a Subway restaurant.  It's either that or the hairdresser shop next door, but I'm pretty sure it's the Subway.

There aren't very many photos of the Laurel Mall from the 80's.  The Standard Speaker newspaper has a few images scattered throughout their archive.  Most of the ones I've seen are black and white and not especially clear, and there aren't many of them.  I haven't been able to find any pictures of the old Aladdin's Castle other than the ones that my grandfather took at my birthday party from when I turned 7 in July, 1987.  This party was my Nana's birthday present to me because she knew that I loved to go to the arcade.

I'm sure there were other birthday parties where people took photos, or maybe there are snapshots that were taken by employees at the grand opening or a Christmas party or something that are sitting in a shoebox somewhere in town, but I've never been able to find any evidence of them online.  If you have any, please get in touch with me on Twitter because I'd love to see them.  Otherwise, please enjoy the only photos of the Aladdin's Castle arcade in the Laurel Mall that I know to exist.

The doors you see above are the entrance to the arcade from the inside.  The photo immediately above was pieced together from two separate photos to show both doors.  You can see toward the top of the space between the left and right doors that I didn't do a great job of combining them. but it'll give you a good idea of what the entrance area of the arcade looked like.

That's me in the red and blue striped shirt playing on a Nintendo Playchoice 10 machine, with my grandmother standing behind me and a few friends from the neighborhood playing machines nearby.  To the left of the machine that I'm playing is Galaga and Galaga 3.  There's a crane machine on the right hand side of the Playchoice 10, and a Birdie King machine in the corner by the door.

These photos were taken in the same part of the arcade, but you can see a little bit more of the arcade machines from this angle.  The game that's to the left of Galaga 3 is the Capcom shmup classic, Legendary Wings.  It debuted in arcades in November 1986, so it was less than a year old when this photo was taken.  

This is one of my childhood friends, Sean, eating a piece of Senape's Pitza while playing Trivial Pursuit on a Bally Sente SAC-1 cabinet.  When I first started writing this post, I wasn't able to identify what game he was playing.  I asked on the Atari Age forums earlier today, and someone was able to tell me exactly what it was within an hour (thank you, Atari Scorpio).

In the background, you can just barely make out the Ring King marquee.  It's in the corner of the arcade on the other side of the front doors across from Birdie King.  I'm not sure what the other games are in between Ring King and Trivial Pursuit.  Likewise for the machine on the far right hand side of the photo, but there's enough of the control panel visible that I'll probably be able to figure it out eventually.

There were four pinball machines on the Trivial Pursuit side of the arcade.  They are, from left to right, Gold Wings, Raven, Cybernaut and Comet.  That's my mother in the bottom photo playing the Cybernaut table.

To the left of the row of pinball machines is a Sinistar game.  You can also see the side of the Trivial Pursuit machine to its left, but there's another machine in between the two that's completely hidden from this angle.  There's also a Ms. Pac Man that bookends the pinball machines on the right.

There's 7 year old me playing the 1984 Namco classic: Pac-Land.  This is a game that I don't think gets the recognition that it deserves.  First of all, the Pac Man characters are based on the Saturday morning cartoon series, so the game has the look and feel of playing a cartoon.  Also, it's a mascot-driven side scrolling platformer that pre-dates Super Mario Bros by a year.  However, it's controls take quite a bit of getting used to because, unlike most games of this style, it's not played with a joystick or a control pad.  You control Pac Man with three buttons - forward, backward and jump, but you don't hold the buttons down - you tap them.  If you want him to run, you have to tap either the forward or backward button quickly.  If you want him to slow down or walk, you've got to start tapping it slowly.  Once you figure out how it works, it's a really fun and challenging game.

To the left of Pac-Land is Ms. Pac Man and the row of pinball machines.  To the right is one of my favorite video games ever made, Discs Of Tron.  If you ever get the opportunity to play it, don't pass it by.  This is one of the first games I ever played in the arcade when I was a kid.  My dad told me that when I was about four or five years old, I would stand on the little stool that they had for kids to help them see the screen and play Discs Of Tron for a good 20 minutes to a half hour on a single quarter.  He said that on one occasion, I had a group of kids from Penn State standing around the machine watching me play.  I don't have any memory of this, but it's kind of cool to know that I had a Jimmy Woods moment in the arcade.

These games are on the opposite wall across from the pinball, Pac-Land and Discs Of Tron machines.  First of all, the game with the big round black thing sitting on the control panel is Crossbow.  It's my favorite shooting game of all time, and I could go on for several paragraphs talking about it.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to play it on my birthday because it was out-of-order.  That big round black thing that I mentioned earlier is the base for a large crossbow controller that you use to shoot at the screen.  As was often the case back in the day, the crossbow was missing, so you couldn't play the game.  I'm not sure if it was easily broken or hard to calibrate, but I'd estimate that the game was only playable about 50% of the time that I ever saw it.  It's a shame, because it's a really great game!

To the left of Crossbow is the Taito arcade classic, Elevator Action.  This is the game that I'm playing in the top photo, but you can't really see much of the cabinet in that picture.  It's more visible in the bottom photo.  The game to the left of Elevator Action is the mid-80's answer to Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II - the 1984 Data East game Karate Champ.  It's has bizarre controls that are the opposite of what you see in Pac-Land.  Instead of a game that has no joystick and all buttons, this one has two joysticks and no buttons at all.  The left joystick moves the character, and the right joystick is used to punch and kick.  This was the one and only arcade machine I owned in my life.  My Uncle Sarge knew a guy who had one that he wanted to get rid of, and I traded a used Sega Genesis console for it.  The arcade unit was in really rough shape with a power cord that was held together with electrical tape, but it played.  I had it in the living room of my first apartment that I lived in on my own in Beaver Meadows.  My friend Margie and I used to spend hours playing it back in those days.  It's really not a very good game, but playing it will always be a very happy memory from a very difficult period of time in my life.

I can't tell what game is being played in the bottom photo, and I don't remember much about the kid.  I think his name is Timmy and he lived down the street from me.  In the background, you can see the Aladdin's Castle Summer Specials sign that has a caddy with flyers.  If memory serves me correct, the token machine was against the wall near that sign.  I think you can see the corner of it directly to the left of the words "Summer Specials" on the sign.

The Summer Specials sign in the background of the previous photo is in the foreground on the left hand side of this photo.  Here, you can see the little caddy that has pamphlets for whatever promotions they're running, and to get prices for a birthday party.

That sign is up against the side of a Rush 'N Attack machine, with a Rampage game directly to the right of that.  I know I've played Rush 'N Attack on the NES quite a bit when I was a kid, but I don't remember if I ever tried the arcade game.  However, I can tell you for a fact that I played a heck of a lot of Rampage in the arcades over the years.  In fact, they still have a working machine at the Timeline Arcade and the arcade in Knoebels that I've played over the past few years.

 

The far left and right corner of Aladdin's Castle had sit-down cabinets for racing games.  I'm not sure which game was on the left hand side of the arcade and which was on the right, but the top photo is my mother and the literal girl next door, Dina, playing Pole Position.  The photo on the bottom was my friend from school, Tommy, playing Sega Turbo.  You've got to dig that wood paneling.  If I ever manage to remodel the basement or the garage to have my very own home arcade, I've got to remember the wood paneling.

This fold-out table was only set up for birthday parties so that families would have a place to put food and drinks and whatnot.  It was in the center of the room at the back of the arcade near the office.  You can see the door to the employee office in the background of the top photo.

It looks like I'm reading my birthday card in the bottom photo.  I'm pretty sure that's a stand-up Spy Hunter machine over my shoulder.  The color and the speaker placement of the machine next to it makes me think it's probably a Donkey Kong Junior machine, but I not positive about that one.

Last, but not least, here are some closeup photos of one of the signs and the office at the Aladdin's Castle in the Laurel Mall.  They were having a special for Independence Day weekend where you could get 15 tokens (normally .25 cents each) for $1.75 with a coupon that was probably in the newspaper.  That's a pretty good deal.  Ordinarily, you'd only be able to get 7 tokens for that price, so you're getting them on a buy-one, get-one-free arrangement, plus one extra free token thrown in for good measure.  Back in those days, every game at the Laurel Mall location only cost a single token, so you'd get to play 15 video games for less than two bucks.  Pretty sweet deal!

The office looked to be pretty small.  You can see that they had a time clock and a vacuum cleaner in there, and this is probably where the folding table was kept when they didn't have a birthday party going on.  The door to the office had a poster for missing children, but I don't know if these were local kids or if this was a poster that was sent to every arcade in the chain with kids from around the country.  I'm thinking it was probably the latter.

Finally, the wall to the left of the office door had a poster board with numbers hand-written on it.  If I had to guess, I'd say that this was where they kept a record of the top scores on some of their games, but the print is too small and blurry for me to make it out, so I could be wrong.

One of these days, I'm going to get some graph paper and try to map out the floor plan of the arcade with each game listed in their correct location.  Until then, I hope you enjoyed these photos of my 7th birthday party and a small glimpse at what a mall arcade in a small town looked like back in 1987.