If you’re a teenager or young adult like me who loves edgy pop culture, Hot Topic is the Holy Grail of stores. For nearly a decade, I explored in awe at the Hot Topic store in my local mall. They sell merchandise of nearly every entertainment product I hold dear to my heart:
Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Studio Ghibli, Star Wars, Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, Comic Book heroes, anime, and plenty of others (Though I wish they’d sell Avatar: The Last Airbender and BoJack Horseman items too.) The tee shirts, hats, and other miscellaneous things I buy there, give me a feeling of excitement and joy like I’m a little kid at a candy store.
Nowadays, however, I'm starting to feel jaded when going to Hot Topic. I still love the material and content the merchandise is based on, but even when I see something I'd love to have, I'm reluctant to buy it.
Exploring the small store that suddenly becomes large upon entering, every cool and awesome thing in there is merged together as an embarrassment of riches. I get lost in trying to find that ONE thing that sticks out that I MUST own. The irony is that almost every item in Hot Topic would stand out vividly in a regular store.
It's hard to pick out merchandise of my favorite property because there are so many different types of items to choose from that it's almost ridiculous.
What's the difference between buying something at Hot Topic that has my favorite show branded on it when I can get the same thing without that image on it but just as useful? Because I like people to know how passionate and intellectual I am about the property they see on my clothes or day-to-day items. It could strike up a conversation in which we can bond over our love for said property or I can explain what it's about to those who haven't seen nor heard of it.
Even then, there's so much merchandise of great properties to choose from that it becomes oversaturated. What made that property special in the first place whether it was great storytelling or complex themes is now reduced to a catchy reference on a tee shirt.
The Hot Topic type of store has since spread out to places like Target and Barnes & Noble. Even though pop culture stuff isn’t the main selling point of those stores, having a section dedicated to them means that fanboys and fangirls will come to find their favorite toys and buy other products in the store as well.
I know how all this sounds right now: I sound like a hipster who discovers and clings to something good that isn’t popular with the mainstream. Then, as soon as that obscure thing gets discovered by the rest of the world and becomes commercially successful, I abandon it because it’s lost its edge and has appealed to the masses. There's an element of truth into that idea, but it isn't the main reason why. Hot Topic maybe popular after all, but it's still not THE store for clothes and day-to-day items.
It’s also worth pointing out how expensive the materials at Hot Topic are. With the exception of the Black Friday sales that have $10 tee shirts, most of the items are overpriced compared to how much they'd be worth in regular stores. Hot Topic likely does this because it's a store of items that fans don't necessarily need but they want. That also means I can buy something I like but its value doesn't match the price I pay. Even though I still like it, I occasionally get buyers remorse because I could've used that money for something I needed.
This is why when I find the clearance section at Target and discover slippers that resemble Chewbacca’s feet for only three dollars, I feel like I found a hidden gem. At Hot Topic, these slippers probably would have cost five times as much and I wouldn't appreciate them as much.
I realized that most of the things I've bought and ordered at that store have become mere window dressing for my bedroom. I hardly look at and acknowledge them at all when I'm in them except for when I'm showing them off to other people.
Now, just because shopping at Hot Topic stores has lost its luster for me doesn't mean that I’ll still occasionally stop by check out what they have. And especially just because I won't shop as much at Hot Topic doesn't mean I still won't consume the entertainment products they're associated with the same way I have before. I love pop culture and the fact there's a store for those properties, but the only time when buying something there is special is if I find the right property on the right object for the right price.
