Hot Topic To Buy ThinkGeek Parent Company Geeknet

jones_supa points out the news (also at Ars Technica, and -- paywalled -- at the Wall Street Journal) that clothing and music retailer Hot Topic has announced plans to buy Geeknet, parent company of ThinkGeek and ThinkGeek Solutions, for $117.3 million. ThinkGeek Solutions is a distributor of video-game themed merchandise through licensed web stores. Hot Topic Inc. will pay $17.50 per Geeknet share. Privately held Hot Topic, based in Los Angeles, has more than 650 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Geeknet will become a Hot Topic subsidiary. This news inspires some nostalgia here; ThinkGeek was for a long time one of Slashdot's sister sites under the umbrella of VA Linux, and I had some fun years back helping to set up the ThinkGeek booth at LinuxWorld in New York.

Comments

Re:Where are the goth kids when you need them?

[ckatko]

I don't care if Hot Topic owns them. I rarely buy anything from ThinkGeek anyway with their "Best Buy"-level price markups. I can't imagine them raising their prices much more for something as silly as a "USB powered Pacman LED lamp" at $32... plus $7.00 shipping (more than it actually costs to ship).

Ah, memories...

[LaurenCates]

I remember when I was in college over 15 years ago, I was a sometime-goth and would buy dresses from Hot Topic because it annoyed most of the student body (where I went, the population was mostly black, or white kids trying to act that way).

I was at one point I was gossiped about, and was called a witch, Satan-worshiper, that sort of thing. Which was a rumor I loved so very much because it kept the Jesus freaks just far enough away that they didn't try to convert me.

Even after I outgrew the whole goth thing, I started finding it disappointing that Hot Topic was turning more into Spencer's. Not that I think being "goth" is any less eye-roll-worthy (I was as pretentious a kid as anyone, and I'll gladly take shit for it) as "stoner", "hipster", "preppie", "geek chic" or whatever, though it's disappointing to see that kind of outlet for kids who want to do that sort of thing devolve and go away.

Of course, I went through a "Think Geek" phase as well, which is more or less the same thing: "Look at the nerdy toy/t-shirt I bought from Think Geek! I am SO a nerd!" Nowadays, I roll my eyes at the two-years-post-college-age kids I know because they're trying just as hard as I did back then to make damn sure the world sees them that way.

I wouldn't interrupt it for anything, because it wouldn't do me or them any good anyway. I simply tell them that I'm going to be archiving their posts from Facebook and showing the feed to them ten years from now, because it's going to be fun watching them realize how right I was when I kept referring to them as "kids".