How Visiting The Back Of 'Spencer's Gifts' Became A Meme And Rite Of Passage

Let me take you back in time real quick. It’s 2011. You’re a spry young teen with an undying love for Sum 41, Dragon Ball Z and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It’s Saturday and you’re going to the mall with a friend. You pass by Spencer’s Gifts and remember a time when you went into the store with your parents and your older brother. Specifically, you remember your brother sneaking off to the back of the store.

You couldn’t see what he was looking at, but by the way he was smiling and snickering as he returned to the family unit, you knew it had to be something great. “You wouldn’t get it,” he tells you later when you ask about it. Now, at the mall with the boys, this is your chance to find out what magic lays in the seedy part of Spencer's and boy oh boy, is it ever magic. You’re confused, nervous, a little bit scared being back there and seeing all these things you shouldn’t see, but you feel alive. This is a defining moment for you; this is the first time you've really ever seen stuff like this so close.

The next day at school, you tell everyone you can about what’s at the back of Spencer’s. You’re not going to keep it some secret like your lame older brother. The people have a right to know what sort of strange and exotic playthings exist back there. “I need to see it,” Justin, a particularly sheepish kid, says. You decide to take him there that next weekend. But before you enter the store, you pull out your brand new iPod Touch, daring to record the mysterious, banned wall for the world to see, finally letting kids of all ages in on the secret.

Your YouTube username is JackO Hatchet. 12 years later, in 2023, you have 18 subscribers, but your Spencer’s video has around 30,000 views. You are one of the first brave soldiers to record and post the back of Spencer’s Gifts online, specifically capturing your friend Justin’s reaction to the back of Spencer’s Gifts. In the video, you sport a reaction of aloof amusement that can only come from being in the back of Spencer’s for the second time, a wiser, more mature man. Justin’s reaction of fear and nervousness at being there for the first time is apparent. Over the next decade, the back of Spencer’s Gifts slowly becomes both a meme and a rite of passage. You're one of the first to document this evolution.

Spencer’s Gifts has always been a somewhat odd and occasionally controversial addition to malls across North America, specifically because of its back half. In a 2018 interview with East Idaho News, Spencer’s Gifts’ general counsel and senior vice president Kevin Mahoney claimed that the store has been selling adult toys and products out of its back half since the mid-1970s. Incidentally, the interview with Mahoney was done because a mother was concerned that kids could easily access the back half of the store. In the interview, Mahoney insists, “If there is someone unattended by a parent or guardian, we make sure they leave," suggesting no minors are buying the products sold back there.

This, however, hasn’t stopped people who are presumably minors (just listen to their voices and study their reactions) from filming their experiences adventuring into the back of Spencer’s, often for the first time. In August 2018, YouTuber X King posted a video simply titled “The back of Spencer's” in which he nervously explores every corner of the back half of the store and comments throughout, at one point calling a phallic object “gross” and concluding the video with the remark, “Wow the back of Spencer’s is disgusting.”

Just a few short years ago in September 2021, highlighting how strong the allure of the back of Spencer's remains, YouTuber Jonny Perez posted a vlog in which he and a few friends go to the back of Spencer’s and childishly laugh at all the objects, forcing the more phallic ones on his male friend. “Imagine sucking on this at school,” he remarks through laughter at one point, holding a phallic-shaped sucker. By the end of the video, when they step out of the store, the group of friends continues to laugh and bond over what they saw (and obviously shouldn’t have seen) in the back of the store, seemingly stronger as friends because of the shared experience.

Yes, there are a million much better and more appropriate ways to bond with the homies. Regardless of that, the further you look online the more content you can find about visiting the back of Spencer’s, revealing the act as a genuine rite of passage and shared experience for many across North America.

Going to the back of Spencer’s can be regarded similarly to watching shows like South Park when you’re too young to understand the jokes. It’s a mindless act of rebellion that will have unknown consequences on your life, but you’re willing to take the plunge to see what all the fuss is about. The parents might not like it, but that’s kind of the point. Every kid breaks a rule or two growing up and visiting the back of Spencer’s is a rule break that’s likely lasted for around 50 years now, but only been recorded and posted online for a small fraction of that time thanks to social media and the thirst for forbidden knowledge.

Beyond a simple rite of passage, memes about the back of Spencer’s have also grown in popularity over the past few years. There are TikTok and YouTube Shorts videos about it, such as a 2022 skit by user snerixx with over 11 million views about an aunt expressing her growing disgust over the objects in the back half of the store. At the end of 2023, a Doge comic about going into the back of Spencer’s to look for more cool shirts went viral on /r/PeterExplainstheJoke, inspiring dozens of comments about exploring the back of the store, with one user recalling, “Yup. I learned this when I wandered into one with my 9-year-old son…," suggesting even some parents aren't aware of the things that go on back there.

Clearly, some parents are going to have a problem with their kids having such easy access to the items at the back of Spencer’s. But with memes and videos about the back of the store still appearing online in the 2020s, it’s safe to assume that the company isn’t planning on making any changes any time soon. Here's hoping all the Spencer's employees continue to be hardworking, trustable citizens and not let kids buy anything that comes from the forbidden wall, lest it all come crashing down.

At the end of the day, all you can really do is take things in perspective. In our new era of technology, kids have access to visuals that are arguably far more worthy of eye bleach than the treasures that lie in the back of Spencer’s. At Spencer’s, at least there are regulations and your kid isn’t going to be able to buy any of the things back there if the employees know what they’re doing.

For what it is, venturing into the back of Spencer’s is a relatively safe rite of passage that most parents will easily be able to prevent with a careful eye, made all the easier if your kid posts their adventure online. We can’t recommend doing it; we’d never do such a thing. But we can recommend going down the "back of Spencer’s" online rabbit hole and discovering just how common this journey is for a quick laugh if nothing else. Some things never go out of style and apparently, the back of Spencer's is one of those things.