The Mall — of the FUTURE!

At a local Goodwill recently, I bought this strange little book for kids that was originally published in England. Titled Department Store, it’s a career guide from 1979. I liked browsing through it to see what swanky department stores looked like in the ’70s, British ones at that (shades of Are You Being Served?). The book also contains some hilariously awful illustrations, some of which are the latest additions to my Kiddie Korner flickr set.

My favorite section was this speculative illustration on what the department store of the future may look like. They certainly got the shopping from home part right; other ideas appear interesting enough in concept, but never caught on (click the illustration to see a larger view).