Throughout the last 30 years, these Mall of America stores have filled our closets and cabinets—and earned a place in our hearts.

Photos courtesy of Mall of America

Shown in the changing west side, Mall of America's evolution from construction to now.

This article is part of a series by Mpls.St.Paul Magazine celebrating MOA’s 30th birthday. Join us as we ride through some of our favorite memories of the last 30 years.

If you spent 10 minutes inside each of Mall of America’s up to 500 stores, you would need 84 hours of shopping to make it through the whole thing. Talk about shop til you drop! MOA offers more than 3 million square feet of retail space—inside a structure that, at 5.6 million square feet, could house 43 Boeing 747s, 103 White Houses, or 347 Statues of Liberty. And while the size is an impressive stat to tout to out-of-towners, it’s the caliber and uniqueness of what’s inside that really has us puffing our chest with hometown pride.

Here we highlight a sampling of our favorite stores—some short-lived, others whose time (or trend) was up, and those with three decades of staying power.

Remember Bare Bones—the store that sold replica bones and science gadgets? When MOA opened its doors in 1992, the zany concept store was the source of many a TV spot highlighting all the novel things that could be found at the Mall. Shoppers could stock up on shoes and skeletons in one convenient trip.

Emily Howald Sefton is a freelance writer and former editor of Weddings.

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