The News Letter: Issue #004
A QUICK UPDATE.
It's been a quick minute since we gave y'all an update on the shop's much-belated opening, so here it is.
Just under a year ago, The Newsagent's enthusiastically established its future home inside Downtown Raleigh's historic Mahler Building. One of Raleigh's oldest commercial buildings and a marvel of Renaissance Revival architecture, The Mahler stood for decades at the epicenter of the city's bustling retail corridor, abutting multiple department stores and playing host to a succession of its own major five-and-dime chains. In fact, one of the last variety stores to depart downtown -- McCrory's -- was a long-standing tenant of The Mahler Building. However, despite its august position in the annals of Raleigh retail history, it has been years since an honest-to-goodness store has occupied The Mahler or any of the adjoining spaces.
Enter The Newsagent's.
We arrived in October of '24 with big ambitions to return The Mahler to its venerable retail roots, but quickly hit a wall (literally) when we were told that a second exit would need to be installed to comply with the state's recently updated fire safety code. No problem! Well, several problems actually: 1) We can't open the store until the door is installed, which could (and will) take months, during which we are hemorrhaging cash; 2) the adjacent parking lot doesn't belong to the building, so an agreement with the lot's owner would need to be reached before construction can begin; 3) the wall into which the door must be installed is 150 years old, making the eventual job itself uniquely challenging and highly specialized.
And so here we are, nearly 12 months since we first set foot inside The Mahler Building, and nearly 6 months since we were set to open The Newsagent's to foot traffic, and we're still several steps away from being able to invite the public to walk through our signature Orange Door.
To be very clear, we are in no way dissuaded by these setbacks. Our big ambitions have grown even grander in the past year thanks in large part to the massive outpouring of support we've received since announcing our plans for this singular space. We are absolutely champing at the bit to bring The Newsagent's to Downtown Raleigh and the greater Triangle community. We firmly believe the wait will be worth it, and are continuing to work around the clock to ensure that when we finally overcome our logistical challenges and launch, you'll agree.
The Rabbit Hole is a semi-regular column devoted to different obscure fixations that have been living rent-free in our headspace -- from things that were big and have now been forgotten, to things that should have been big and now finally might be.
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT.
In "Surprise and Delight," the third chapter of his credulous ode to the "Starbucks Experience," big business hagiographer Joseph Michelli advises companies to consider taking a page out of the box of legendary snack food brand Cracker Jack:
"While Cracker Jack was a consistently popular treat, its appeal increased dramatically in 1912, when a surprise could be found in every package," Michelli writes. "Unfortunately, many companies focus too much on basic ingredients, and not enough on adding that extra something that differentiates them from their competition and builds brand loyalty."
One of those companies is Frito-Lay, maker of Cracker Jack, which shortly after the centennial of the Cracker Jack prize, announced it would be phasing out physical toys in favor of QR codes to download shovelware games through the Cracker Jack app.
But Frito-Lay is far from the only food conglomerate to substitute whimsy with absolutely nothing. In fact, they all have.
The seemingly abrupt abandonment of prizes in cereal boxes has become a memetic barometer for the general decline of fun in the name-brand food world, and with good reason. Companies clearly used to care more about attracting customers to their products and away from competitors by offering an "extra something" beyond the generic promise of a hearty breakfast (or, conversely, some wacky-yet-inedible "limited edition" synergy). Cereal makers have long benefitted from urban legends attributing the death of cereal box prizes to advertising laws or environmental concerns or actual deaths, but the simple fact is that they no longer need to try very hard to win your wallet, so they just don't.
Every cereal brand in existence is manufactured by just a small handful of massive multinational conglomerates, which in turn manufacture every other food brand in existence. Between constantly cutting costs to increase profit margins and not really having to placate customers since real choice is an illusion, these companies collectively decided to stop making an effort and the end result is that the world is an blander place for it.
And once the prizes were gone, inevitably the boxes got boring too, as did the cereals themselves. There is likely no more poignant an example of this decline in inventiveness than Ralston's Ghostbusters brand cereal:
Putting aside the obvious Portent of Calamity (i.e., that Ralston no longer exists), this iconic 80s cereal checks off a superfecta of boxes when it comes to Things That Cereal Companies No Longer Do: 1) Amazing prizes, 2) awesome packaging, 3) unique cereal (flavor + shape), and 4) tie-ins that don't seem like cheap cash-grabs but actually perform authentic fan service. When General Mills revived Ghostbusters cereal for the release of Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2021, not only did they not even try to recreate or enhance the original, but they ended up producing what amounted to a cheap knock-off with none of the fun or fandom of the original (ironically appropriate, given the film itself!). Why? Say it with me this time: Because they don't have to.
"What's the big deal?," you ask. "Why are you getting all worked up over free terrariums and Light-Up Saber Spoons?" Because there is no Light-Up Saber Spoon. The Light-Up Saber Spoon is a metaphor.
Studies have repeatedly shown that unstructured, spontaneous play with real toys is essential to the development of myriad critical skills in children, both social and educational. "Play with traditional toys was associated with an increased quality and quantity of language compared with play with electronic toys," notes a recently reaffirmed report on "The Power of Play" published in Pediatrics. The same report highlights an experiment in which researchers "compared preschoolers playing with blocks independently with preschoolers watching Baby Einstein tapes" and found that "the children playing with blocks independently developed better language and cognitive skills than their peers watching videos."
Growing up surrounded by drawers upon drawers of random tactile artifacts that sparked creative, communal free play was profoundly beneficial in ways that growing up surrounded by QR codes and smartphone apps is empirically not.
Looking back on it now, cereal prizes were merely the canary in the Cocoa Pebbles box. The War on Whimsy extended far beyond toys and play, touching mass entertainment, architecture, even technology, which is not only less reliable now, but somehow less innovative despite being technically newer. Even imagination itself has fallen victim to imagination decay. Don't believe me? Check out the cover of Imagination magazine from October, 1958 --
Okay, just kidding with that last one (sorta), but the rest is solid.
Anyway, there's still hope: The recent breakup of several key food conglomerates suggests consumers may finally be getting fed up with basic brands and their lack of extras, and threatening to permanently phase out the prize of their hard-earned money. The companies don't seem to understand the real problem (see Ferraro buying WK Kellogg) but the problem is there nonetheless: Groceries used to be different, and now they're all the same. Might as well be eating Soylent Green (spoiler alert: It's people).
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RIYL: Slice of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts -- a heartstrings-tugging documentary about former Pizza Hut buildings and what they're up to now.
