It wasn't really a big surprise when Target announced they'd have junk-food-free checkout lanes, but replacing the chips and candy with cigarettes? Didn't see that coming.
Kidding. They're more likely to display a bucket of loaded guns than hawk coffin nails. They're getting ahead of public pressure, it seems; anti-chip factions are already targeting Bed, Bath and Beyond. The "beyond" part used to refer to their rocketry division, which was sold off in the '90s; now it must mean "enormous quantities of consumable items with the nutritional value of Vaseline," because that's what greets you as you near the checkouts.
Now that you've got some sheets, how about some licorice?
That's the business model, and they'll stick to it until they're shamed into putting the stuff in a back room you can't enter without signing a waiver.
Annnnnd right about here is where you'd expect bleats of dismay over rampant nannyism, but I don't care. It's their business and if they wanted to stock the checkout aisles with Gently Used Dr. Scholl's pads, that's their choice. It's not as if they don't have enormous sacks of reviled potatoes elsewhere in the store. Granted, if they get rid of the gum, I'll miss the opportunity to keep up on the innovations of the Chemical Flavor Industrial Complex, which comes up with things like Kiwi-Sriracha Sherbet, and sells you 10 sticks wrapped in premium foil shaved from the hulls of Gulfstream jets. If they get rid of the tiny tins of Altoids, I'll miss the conversation that always follows: With you, or in the bag?
"That's rather the same, isn't it? I mean, the bag goes with me. Please be more specific."
I'm just trying to help, but I always get a sour look. Anyway. Here's one thing I'd be happy to see disappear from the checkout lanes: the Periodical Library for People Who Care About Kardashians in Single or Multiple Forms.
Three types of magazines: fitness magazines, which offer "438 Ways to a Firm Butt in under 9 seconds"; Cosmo-type mags with many tips on how to be a frantic, joyless sexbot; celebrity mags, which might strike you as dispatches from a parallel dimension where headlines like KYLIE DRAMA BABY JEN MALIBU HEARTACHE make sense. If we'd just discovered an island populated with nothing but good-looking people who only produce fragrance lines and unwatchable films, I can see checking in every so often for amusement, but the check-out line seems to presume I regard these people the way a feline regards catnip rolled in tuna juice.