1980s: "The Meat Market at Sears"

[Groceteria]

I found this while working on a volunteer project I'm involved in at the local library. I have no memory of such a thing in 1984 (date of the ad), but I wasn't shopping at Sears a lot in those days, either. Was this whole "meat market" thing an ongoing nationwide thing, a limited promo or what?

Also note the odd logo that was being used on all their newspaper ads at the time, although the "regular" logo was still present near the bottom.

[runchadrun]

I found identical ads in the LA Times. There was one ad in June 1984 using the lower-case logo you have, and several in January 1985 with the 1980's logo at the top (the one in all caps with the stripe in the letters) then the ads stopped. It must not have been something that lasted very long. The steaks were sold "frozen by the box" so it doesn't sound like they had a butcher shop.

[BillyGr]

Possibly a limited time thing they set up with someone (or some company) to bring the stuff in and sell it (kind of like when someone comes and sets up a truck in the parking lot of a store/center and sells whatever out of it - often times based on the season or holiday like flowers or fireworks where legal)?

This was during one of their down turns in sales (when they were making lower sales each year rather than higher) and they might have been looking for anything to get people into the stores.

[Dave]

I remember when Sears did the meat thing here in Richmond (frozen shrimp and other seafood, too). It was a every now and then thing where the brought in frozen bulk food and sold it. Frankly, I never really thought about buying meat at Sears and don't recall for sure if it was one of those "out of the truck" deals, but I believe it was.

[Groceteria]

"Come see the frozen side of Sears..."

[Max]

Surprisingly, it appears that the odd Sears logo (with "sears" in a "fat," all-lowercase font) appeared in newspaper ads for quite some time. Specifically, that Sears logo was in use from approximately January 1, 1983 to June 30, 1984. During that time, that logo would often appear at the top of newspaper ads or circulars, while the familiar "Sears"-in-a-rectangle logo still appeared at the bottom of the ads.

Here's a 12/31/82 ad showing the rectangle logo at both the top and bottom of the page:

https://www.newspapers.com/article/john ... 144891047/

The first appearance of the fat, all-lowercase logo which I could find was from 1/1/83:

https://www.newspapers.com/article/sout ... 144891138/

And the last appearance of that logo which I could find was from 7/1/84:

https://www.newspapers.com/article/pres ... 144892290/

Interestingly, I found an ad from a few days prior (very similar to the one which the Groceteria Webmaster shared) about steaks that Sears was selling:

https://www.newspapers.com/article/pres ... 144891957/

The first appearance of the "racetrack" logo which I could find was from 6/30/84. Below are links to Sears ads from 6/30/84 and 7/1/84, as well as a link to a newspaper article explaining the logo change:

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the- ... 144891634/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the- ... 144892451/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/asbu ... 144891792/

I am not sure why the fat, all-lowercase logo was used for 18 months. This is just speculation, but perhaps by the end of 1982, Sears felt that its rectangle logo was outdated but could not yet find a suitable replacement (hence the usage of a temporary logo which only appeared at the top of circulars and newspaper ads). If the newspaper article found by clicking on the link directly above is correct, apparently the process of redesigning of the Sears logo did not even begin until mid-1983, thus suggesting that the fat, all-lowercase logo was intended to be used only temporarily.