Second Hand Rose

Where the merchandise of dearly departed attractions is now sold, a dearly departed store once stood.

When Universal Studios Florida opened, the corner of Delancey and 7th Avenue belonged to Second Hand Rose. The name was a double entendre, both a reference to the 1922 Universal silent film and a hint at its wares. The store sold old, outdated, and generally unwanted Universal merchandise. But there wasn’t a whole lot of supply to meet that demand in the early years.

Around 1994, in the groundswell of an unexpected Rocky & Bullwinkle resurgence, an athletic store based on the famous moose moved in. Bull’s Gym outlasted Second Hand Rose and even the neighboring song-and-dance show based on its cartoon source material. It carried the expected array of stuffed squirrels and sports jerseys, but sold some stranger keepsakes, too - a line of apparel based on the fictional teams from TV’s Coach sold well enough to warrant a headline in the Orlando Sentinel.

Second Hand Rose was gone, though not forgotten. In 1996, Fotozine, a novelty photography service that put average joes on the cover of their favorite magazines, closed and a new Second Hand Rose opened in its place. The Fotozine sign still hangs where it always did, but the neon now says “Union City News.”

With the benefit of time and a rapidly changing park, the relocated Second Hand Rose had much more stock on hand. Lesser-loved Real Ghostbusters toys warmed pegs past the grand opening of Twister, the discount getting deeper by the year. Leftovers from overblown marketing blitzes - 1994’s The Flintstones and 1995’s Casper, especially - made good-enough souvenirs for even the thriftiest vacationers.

When 1999 rolled around and Universal Studios Florida became Universal Studios Escape, the resort-wide growing pains kept Second Hand Rose in business. There was no telling what the hot Islands of Adventure stuffed animal would be. Good news for the Cat in the Hat. Bad news for Hagar the Horrible’s extended family. Better news for Second Hand Rose, at least for a while.

In 2003, Universal took a cue from the competition and sent its unsold merchandise elsewhere. Second Hand Rose became the self-explanatory New York Candy Co. until a more permanent replacement was worked out. Rosie’s Irish Shop opened in 2006 and endures as a catty-corner complement to Finnegan’s Bar & Grill.

The Delancey Street Preview Center took over the Bull’s Gym space in 2005. Though the Film Vault overhauled the 7th Avenue entrance in 2014, an original sign for Bull’s still hangs off the South Street entrance.

Second Hand Rose does live on at Universal Studios Japan, where the original façade survives on its original corner, though no t-shirt has ever been sold behind its windows.

Universal Studios Outlets

Disney had been unloading its unwanted merchandise to local outlet stores for years. It was time Universal caught up.

The first Universal Studios Outlet opened in Mall 1 of Belz Factory Outlet World on the north end of International Drive not long after Second Hand Rose shut its doors. The merchandise may have been familiar, but the volume was unprecedented. Like the two Disney outlets - Character Warehouse and Character Premiere - located elsewhere in the complex, the Universal outlet had space to spare. Older, weirder mementos mingled with the recently disavowed. PVC figurines of Beetlejuice in cartoon form, the show itself cancelled over a decade prior, could’ve been sold by the pound. Before it became a collectable tour-de-force, bits and pieces from Halloween Horror Nights, like a glow-in-the-dark Bill & Ted mug from 2001, showed up for pennies on the dollar.

A second Universal outlet opened directly across from Disney’s Character Warehouse in the Orlando Premium Outlets near Lake Buena Vista. The difference in venue was night and day. Belz, which opened in 1990 only a few months after the Studios, represented the dream of ‘80s shopping. Indoors, air-conditioned, and above all inexpensive. Premium, which opened in 2004, was a prophesy by comparison. Outdoors, posh, and above all branded. The Universal store there was only a fraction of its sister store’s size due, in part, to management decree - Belz didn’t want major anchor stores, but Premium was dictated by them.

By 2005, when Prime Retail bought the Belz complex, it looked like an antique. A massive two-year remodel turned the place inside-out. The newly rechristened Prime Outlets - International opened in 2007 as a near carbon-copy of the outlets down I-4, though it no longer had a Universal store.

The Belz location closed in May of 2006 ahead of the demolition and moved across the street to the Festival Bay mall the following year.

Look up the definition of “ill-fated” in any recent dictionary and a Festival Bay brochure should already be keeping the page.

When Belz Enterprises grand-opened the 800,000-square-foot mall in 2002, it was an experimental extension of the company line. There were no traditional anchors or department stores. Instead, the heavy hitters were brands that toed the line between shopping and entertainment. Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World. A Vans-sponsored skatepark. Signs promised a complementary “Surfpark” from Ron Jon for years, though nothing ever materialized beyond the usual Surf Shop.

As luck and location would have it, nothing much else materialized past the anchor stores either. Smaller businesses never came and neither did shoppers, even though the outdoor mall across the street stayed busy. Ownership changed hands. Plans were announced and quietly recanted. When Vans pulled out in January of 2012, the writing was on the wall.

Despite the steady decline, Festival Bay’s Universal store lasted longer than the smaller outlet at Premium, finally closing on April 30th, 2012. The entire complex didn’t last much longer. It’s $70-million rebranding as Artegon Marketplace lasted only three years, from 2014 to 2017. The latest attempt at resurrection, involving a classic car museum and apartment complex, has already endured one stop-work order from the city of Orlando.

In 2010, Premium Outlets parent company, Simon Property Group, bought Prime Outlets, delineating the two near-identical shopping centers as Orlando International Premium Outlets and Orlando Vineland Premium Outlets, respectively.

The Universal outlet at Vineland is now a Steve Madden store.

There’s no middleman for unsold merchandise anymore - Universal sells it at cut-rate prices to annual passholders and team members during “garage sales” held on-property.

Today, there is only one place in town outside resort bounds to buy Universal Orlando souvenirs.

Universal Studios Florida Airport Store

 

The Orlando International Airport has always enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with Central Florida’s theme parks. What’s good for one is invariably good for the other. In 1990, after the one-two punch of Disney-MGM Studios and Universal opening, MCO added a third terminal for $130 million.

Gift shops are just the inevitable byproduct.

Disney had a presence at MCO long before Universal broke ground, but the new Studio in town came to play. The original Universal Studios Florida store at Orlando International was a loud, proud extension of the park itself.

Travelers passing under the hot pink neon sign found themselves in a mall-scale recreation of the real thing. King Kong’s head busted through the carpeting, ruined airport trolley in-hand, to welcome shoppers with a mouth full of football-sized fangs. Sculpted dioramas for Earthquake and Jaws, smaller facsimiles of the billboards that long startled motorists on I-4, perched on Woody Woodpecker paraphernalia. E.T. and Elliott levitated over the glassware. An abridged Temple of Gozer took up an entire corner, complete with a lone Terror Dog and two anonymous Ghostbusters.

And then of course there was the good old-fashioned stuff.

The finest in theme park jewelry - No-Ghost wristwatches in bright purple, silver charms of Universal’s peanut gallery, etc. - shined in a circular glass case that doubled as the register. Posters were available for all the films represented. A dangling TV played Universal Studios Florida: Experience the Magic of Movies over and over again in hopes that somebody might spring for a copy with their souvenir booklet.

The store carried just about everything that the emporium did, but with unmistakable, unforgettable style.

Style, though, has a habit of changing. By the late 1990s, Kong got a facelift that squished him more conveniently against the wall. Doc Brown and his Delorean made belated appearances. Nickelodeon oozed in. Teasers for T2-3D and toys from The Lost World hinted at the massive changes to come.

The original airport store faded away when the park became a resort. Riding The Movies was only half the fun. No reason the old guard had to take up all that space. Soon enough, one store became two.

But the oversized characters never left. Now Optimus Prime and Harry Potter beckon the jet-lagged and just-leaving. Some still have their own little dioramas, like Blue the velociraptor and her electric fence or the Minions and their ambiguous machinations.

The scope, scale, and personality still draw the people in. That’s still Universal.