Family Video and Fry's Entertainment have closed their doors for good, adding their names to a growing list of famous American names that no longer exist, except in a few cases online. Click or scroll through how some giant US companies of the past and present came to a tragic end.

If you're of a certain age, you no doubt have fond memories renting movies or video games and stocking up on popcorn and candy from your neighbourhood Blockbuster store. The very first Blockbuster store opened in 1985 in Dallas, and the chain expanded fast. By the 1990s, Blockbuster had established itself as America's most popular video rental chain.

Yet, by the late-2000s, Blockbuster was on its last legs. Tough competition from the likes of Netflix's mail order service, video on demand and automated kiosks pretty much killed the business and Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010. The flagging firm was bought by Dish Network, which eventually closed most of the stores, apart from one in Bend, Oregon.

The number one US airline for much of the 20th century, Pan Am revolutionised air travel. A trailblazer of both luxurious first class and more affordable coach, the iconic airline, which was founded in 1927, pioneered the jumbo jet and computerised reservation systems and at one time was the second most recognised brand in the world.

Sadly, the glory days weren't to last. Falling revenues, increased competition and a hike in aircraft servicing costs hit the airline hard during the 1970s and 1980s, and a downturn in sales following the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 spelled the end for the brand. Rising fuel prices in the wake of the Gulf War were the final straw. Without a saviour to bail it out, Pan Am filed for bankruptcy in January 1991, shutting down for good in December 1991.

A common sight in downtown shopping areas back in the day, Borders bookstores disappeared completely from the scene in 2011. The chain was founded by brothers Louis and Tom Borders in Michigan in 1971, and was sold twenty years later to Kmart, which oversaw its massive expansion in the 1990s. At its peak, there were thousands of stores, but Borders found itself struggling by the 2000s. Borders bought into music just as CD sales were floundering and failed to develop a decent online store, while underestimating the growth of e-books and MP3s.

Fewer customers were shopping in the increasingly quiet stores and the chain had simply become too big. Borders turned a profit for the last time in 2006 and filed for bankruptcy in February 2011, its stores closing later that year. Although Barnes & Noble bought some of the remnants of the chain, the bookseller opted to retire rather than resurrect the brand, and Borders was no more.

Living up to its name, this venerable motorcar marque was founded way back in 1897 by Ranson E Olds in Lansing Michigan. Oldsmobile brought us the world's first mass-produced car, the Curved Dash, which debuted in 1901, and was one of America's most recognisable brands throughout much of the 20th century.

An impressive 35 million Oldsmobile vehicles were produced, most of them by General Motors. Sales reached their zenith in the 70s and 80s, and the Oldsmobile Cutlass was American's best-selling car in 1976. But the marque's days at the top were numbered. By the 90s, flashier imports had stolen its thunder and sales had slumped. Despite efforts to reposition Oldsmobile as a high-end 'Made in America' brand, General Motors threw in the towel and consigned Oldsmobile to history in 2004.

The company that owned much-loved brands including Tang, Kool-Aid and Sanka decaffeinated coffee started life in 1922, having developed from the earlier Postum Cereal Co. Throughout the next few decades, General Foods continued to make acquisitions, right up until the 70s and 80s with the purchase of Oscar Mayer & Company’s meat products and Entenmann’s baked goods.

Despite its many successful brands, General Foods succumbed to the purchasing power of bigger companies when it was bought by Phillip Morris Companies, which later merged operations with Kraft. Nowadays, if you buy any of General Foods’ former products, you’ll notice the Kraft logo on them.

McDonald's may have ended up on top, but at one time the world's most popular fast food chain had a serious competitor that might have changed everything: Burger Chef. The chain was founded in 1954 by the General Equipment Corporation in Indianapolis. By 1972, the rapidly-expanding Burger Chef was America's second-largest hamburger restaurant chain after McDonald's, and was threatening to topple the golden-arched incumbent from the number one spot.

We might all have been chowing down on Big Shefs and Super Shefs instead of Big Macs and Quarter Pounders, but McDonald's eventually cornered the market. Struggling Burger Chef was sold to Hardee's parent company Imasco in 1982, and all remaining outlets were converted into Hardee's restaurants.

If you owned a computer in the 1990s, chances are it was a Compaq – the company was the largest supplier of PCs during the decade. Launched in 1982 by three former Texas Instruments employees, Compaq was at the forefront of PC technology for years. The firm gained the first licence to re-engineer the IBM PC, which was the key to its success. But the rise of Dell, which was producing better quality computers at more competitive prices, was seriously eating into Compaq's profits by the late 1990s.

An ill-advised merger with DEC and the dotcom bubble burst were the final nails in the coffin, and Compaq was snapped up in 2002 by HP for $25 billion (£17.5bn). A shadow of its former self, the Compaq brand was restricted to a small number of budget models until it was quietly discontinued in 2013.

The original five-and-dime-store, the first Woolworth's was opened by Frank Winfield Woolworth in 1878 in Utica, New York. After a slow start, the company expanded across the country, bringing its clever five-and-dime concept to the rest of America. The chain began diversifying in the 1930s, ditching the five-and-dime selling point. By the 1960s, the typical Woolworth's was essentially a full-scale department store.

The 1980s and 1990s were less kind. Increased competition from retailers from Walmart to Target led to a drop in profits, but Woolworth's sporting goods division stayed buoyant. As a result, all remaining stores were closed in 1997 and the company moved to focus 100% on sporting goods, eventually changing its name to Foot Locker.

In its heyday in the 70s, Howard Johnson’s was one of America’s most popular roadside fast food chains. With its iconic orange-roofed buildings and simple menu of chicken, clams and hot dogs, the restaurant was a firm family favorite for years, operating 1,000 restaurant locations at its peak.

However, HoJo’s faced tough competition from other franchises like Applebee's and Chili's and its stagnant menu failed to keep up with the times. In 1985 it was bought out by Marriott for $65 million (£60m), with restaurants reopening as hotels and coffee shops, although one original Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Lake George, New York remains open, displaying a sign that reads "Last one standing."

An emblematic airline with an illustrious history, Trans World Airlines (TWA) dates back to 1924 and owes its expansion to a former owner, the eccentric tycoon, film producer and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, who oversaw the airline's surging growth during the 1940s and 1950s. TWA acquired new management in the 1960s. Business was thriving and the passengers kept on coming until the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, which threw open the domestic market to a slew of competitors.

Losing out to rival airlines, TWA was acquired in 1988 by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who took the company private and left it drowning in debt. The ailing airline underwent a series of bankruptcies during the 1990s and early 2000s, and was bought by American Airlines in 2001, which "absorbed" the brand the following year.

EF Hutton, the brokerage firm named after Edward Francis Hutton (pictured), was founded in 1904 and for several decades it was a popular and well-regarded financial services company. It was best known for its commercials, which used the slogan “When EF Hutton talks, people listen”. But in the 80s, the firm unraveled spectacularly. Where did it all go wrong? In 1980, EF Hutton got into trouble for writing checks for more money than was available in branch, using a system called “chaining”. In 1985, a federal probe found that the company had committed more than 2,000 acts of fraud, and two years later it was revealed that the company had laundered money for a criminal family.

So, following the 1987 crash, EF Hutton merged with Shearson Lehman/American Express to save it from complete collapse. However, the firm was revived in 2007 and went public in 2013, taking on the name of EF Hutton America Inc. All was going well until April 2019 when the CEO and CFO resigned, and the business once again came to a halt.

Retailer Circuit City was founded in 1949 by Samuel Wurtzel, who is credited with creating the world's first electronic superstores. By the 70s, outlets were springing up across the nation and the chain's format was being copied far and wide. Circuit City began to lose its edge in the 90s, with many of its stores languishing in undesirable locations, while competitors like Best Buy and Walmart stole away customers.

By the mid-2000s, intensifying competition from online retailers spelled the end of the road for circuit City. In 2008, the company shut down 155 stores and laid off 17% of its workforce in an effort to become profitable, but was unable to stave off Chapter 7 bankruptcy or find a buyer, and bowed out the following year, closing all its US stores and ceasing operations for good.

Half a century ago, Eastern Airlines was one of the 'Big Four' American airlines, running a profitable business and dominating the domestic travel industry. The company, which started life as a mail carrier for the US postal service, grew throughout the first half of the 20th century, benefiting from the rising popularity of air travel.

Revenues began to fall in the 60s, when competition from other airlines drew customers away from Eastern. This was worsened by the company’s decision to buy new Boeing 757 jets, which increased debt and, coupled with worker strikes and further competition, sowed the seeds of the company’s bankruptcy in 1989. Three years later, Eastern Airlines ceased operations completely. 

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Here’s one that teenagers of the 70s and 80s will remember. Merry-Go-Round, known for its on-trend clothes which appealed to young people in their late teens and early twenties. With 536 stores across the country, the company enjoyed short-lived success for just over two decades before its downfall in the 90s.

As prices failed to stay competitive and the market of young customers shrunk once baby boomers had grown up, Merry-Go-Round struggled to stay afloat. In 1994, it filed for bankruptcy, but was unable to find a buyer and so, two years later, Merry-Go-Round stores had to shut their doors. This signaled the end of the brand’s short yet influential spell in the fashion industry.

Once a leading energy firm, Amoco was formed when The Standard Oil Company merged with American Oil Company in 1910, rebranding as Amoco. With its iconic red, white and blue gas stations, Amoco not only provided the fuel for America's cars but invented some of the key features of today’s gas stations: the metered pump, the drive-thru set-up and tanker trucks used to refill pumps.

Despite its success, in 1998 the brand was taken over by British Petroleum (BP), in one of the biggest ever purchases of an American company by a foreign corporation. BP replaced Amoco stations with its branding, and the company disappeared. However, in recent years BP has announced it will be bringing back the Amoco brand in gas stations across the US, so it might see something of a revival. 

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In business terms, Pets.com’s lifespan of just two years was the blink of an eye – but the pivotal moment at which it entered the scene is still well-remembered. Emerging in 1998 at the dawn of the dotcom bubble, the site sold (you guessed it) pet products and accessories, and even had a memorable television ad featuring a sock puppet.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Despite attracting investment from the likes of Amazon, in 2000 Pets.com saw its stock fall from $14 per share to just $0.22 per share, signalling the end of the road. In a last-ditch attempt to keep the company alive, Pets.com even started selling its sock puppets, but it’s clear it was barking up the wrong tree and the business ceased operations in 2000.

The fall of Enron might just be one of the biggest Wall Street scandals in American history. An energy firm born in 1985 from the merger of InterNorth Inc. and Houston Natural Gas Co, Enron took advantage of deregulated energy markets and rising internet stocks to become a prominent market player, even being named “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years by Fortune.

It turned out Enron had cooked the books. The company manipulated “market-to-market” accounting methods to log estimated profits instead of real ones, which meant it could massively overstate how much money it was bringing in. After hiding its debts for several years, the firm filed for bankruptcy at the end of 2001 and its CEO Jeffrey Skilling received a massive prison sentence of 24 years for fraud, although this was eventually brought down to 10 years.

Music fans might remember this popular record store chain, which had 200 stores across 15 countries at its peak. Tower Records began its legacy in 1960, when the first store was opened in Sacramento, California, quickly growing its network across the US as well as in countries including Japan (where it still exists independently), Canada and the UK.

But like many former retail giants, Tower Records struggled with dwindling sales, especially following the introduction of music downloads and streaming software, which made records and CDs fall out of favor. In 2006, Tower declared bankruptcy and was bought by the Great American Group for $134.3 million (£76m) with the plan to sell most of its stock.

Another tech firm that failed to keep up with the times, Iomega brought us the ZIP drive, a storage device that promised superior capacity to that of its predecessor, the floppy disk. Starting out in 1980, Iomega was a big name in tech for more than two decades before going out of business.

In the early 2000s, CDs and DVDs’ popularity spelled bad news for the humble ZIP drive. While the company tried to stay ahead of the game by dabbling in MP3 software and external hard drives, these products didn’t prove particularly fruitful for them and, in 2008 Iomega was purchased by EMC for $213 million (£107m).

The past decade hasn’t been kind to bricks-and-mortar stores, and The Bon-Ton is its latest victim. With a 160-year legacy behind it, The Bon-Ton was an iconic US department store which had weathered numerous storms over the years but it couldn’t survive today’s tough marketplace.

The company’s demise was caused by rivalry from e-commerce giants such as Amazon. After filing for bankruptcy in January 2017, the business liquidated its assets in April 2018, closing its remaining 240 stores across the country. 

 

The toy store that no-one could bear to say goodbye to, Toys R Us had a legacy spanning almost seven decades by the time it filed for bankruptcy in the US in September 2017. With the first store opening in Washington DC in 1948, Toys R Us profited from the baby boom and economic prosperity that followed the war years, going on to be considered the most important toy store in the world.

At first, ecommerce helped the business, as Toys R Us teamed up with Amazon in 2000 as its exclusive toy retailer for a 10-year period. Yet when Amazon allowed other toy companies to sell through its site before the end of the contract, Toys R Us ended the partnership. The toy giant successfully sued Amazon, but didn't fully recover. A toxic combination of greedy investors and mismanaged finances meant the chain was forced to go bankrupt in September 2017. A company called Tru Kids Inc. bought the retailer in 2018 and opened two new stores in New Jersey and Texas. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to shoppers staying away from stores, has meant those stores have now been shuttered, although the brand does continue to exist in Canada and a few other countries and online.

After 42 years in business, this January Family Video announced it was closing all of its stores for good. The chain that started as a video rental store, before adapting to DVD and BluRay, had survived the industry's move to streaming while rivals including Blockbuster and Hollywood Video could not. And while Family Video had shrunk a little since 2018, it went into 2020 with 500 stores located mainly across the Midwest. But then came COVID-19...

As stay-at-home orders dramatically reduced footfall and movie releases were at an all-time low, Family Video started to close stores, and at the end of 2020 had just 250 locations. Within a month the news came that Family Video was closing all its remaining stores. Pictured is a member of staff clearing the shelves at Family Video's last location in West Des Moines, central Iowa.

This San Jose, California-based business was founded in 1985 by the Fry brothers with the aim of being "a one-stop-shopping environment for the Hi-Tech Professional". The business grew to 31 stores across nine states, but this week Fry's Electronics made the shock announcement that it was shutting its doors for good.

Fry's didn't adapt and improve its online shopping operations as fast as its rivals, which meant the impact of COVID-19 was much more severe on its business. Many of its stores were themed, including its Burbank, California location (pictured), where a UFO seemed to be crashing through the store. It's another sad loss in a turbulent time.

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