Re: Radio Shack was useful at one time (And still is)
The one thing I noticed, having perused their once well-stocked shelves since back before the dawn of blue LED's, (early 90's), is that they slowly raised prices and dropped selection.
A disc cap assortment of around a hundred pieces was around $5 (going on foggy childhood memory here..), chump change, but eventually price stayed the same and quantity went down.
Soon the "RC toy" craze went full nards to the wall, then the cellular craze started, and then the MP3 players, overpriced computer accessories ($35 USB cables...), and other "OMG AWESOME!!!" stuff creeped in.
Since a store is only so big, what once was 4 aisles of components, turned to 4 half-aisles, then to 2 halfs, then to one half aisle, to accommodate. Entire wall of cellphone cases, kiosks of Verizon, Sprint, Etc phones, walls of cables, bluetooth speaker gizmos...
The arduino/pi/beaglebone/etc came in too late, at too high a price point, for most to buy them. Those who knew about them bought online, and those who didn't were put-off by the price.
The 1000-in-one electronics kits never really dropped in price with the reduction in component costs, and were always on the expensive side to begin with.
They were great though, I have many fond memories of messing around with mine and driving the parents nutty with bloops, squeals, bluarps, and the occasional bit of magic smoke when I biased a transistor too hot.
Add to it that the old white-beards and EE students were no longer working there, and you got "I don't know what you mean?" when you asked if they had decoupling caps or any new microcontrollers in stock.
I'm rambling... :(
Oh RadioShack, we are saddened by your transformation into CellHut...