Conan Ford ) writes:
I was there today, "The Source" seems to be clearing everything off its
shelf that has the Radio Shack or Realistic name on it still, which
includes a lot of parts (which have probably sat there for years). No word
on if any replacements will be obtained. Even a lot of the Audio cables
were cleared off the shelf, half the useless devices, and the Radio Shack
batteries were 1/2 price. The salesman was like, "Nope, not getting rid of
our shortwave radios because none of them say Radio Shack on them."

I'd forgotten about the parts having the Radio Shack name. I was
thinking just about all that remains is the Radio Shack brand
batteries.

Certainly they have been dropping the Radio Shack name from the
products in recent years, though I can't remember if it anticipated
the sale to Circuit City or came after. So those descendents of
the Minimus 7 speakers were branded Optimus for a while, and then
I think Radio Shack, and I think I've seen the same basic speaker under
the "Centrios" brand. In other words, the product remained but it
was rebranded.

So we have instead of "Radio Shack" or "Realistic" brands,
we see "Centrios" and "Nexxtech".

And of course, there have been well known brands in the flyers
in recent years, which was something that never happened in
the old days.

But you're right, the parts still carried the name. Of course,
four or five years ago, at least around here, the stores were
clearing out the parts, not just some but all. I remember getting
some neat items at about a third of the price, but also stumbled
on it late enough that some things I had wanted to stock up on
were already gone. The good thing about parts at Radio Shack
has always been that while the prices were often outrageous,
if you waited long enough the prices would become great when
the parts were cleared out.

Thanks for the reminder, I will check some of the stores
this week.

Shortly before I saw your post I did check http://www.radioshack.ca
to see if there was anything about clearing out Radio Shack brand items.
The site is gone, or rather, there is the press release about the
name change and a bit about the new name. ANd the new URL,
http://www.TheSourceCC.com

Interestingly, when I checked the flyer it says there is no current
flyer, though the current Radio Shack one runs till May 8th. Perhaps
that will be the last RS flyer in Canada.

Michael