Thirty years after Oakland Mall workers sealed a time capsule inside the base of a new 75-foot electronic sign along I-75, the mall in Troy cracked it open yesterday, pulling out a Barbie doll, a Power Rangers activity book, a Detroit Red Wings puck stamped with a child's photo, and stacks of yellowed local newspapers. Grown adults who had buried those items as small children came back to watch, some traveling from out of state just to see what they had left behind.
The capsule was originally placed on August 29, 1996, when Oakland Mall replaced its original 1968 freeway sign with the taller electronic version, according to a mall social media post. Contributors' names were later listed on a commemorative plaque attached to the pylon sign structure, and that plaque remained on-site for the full three decades, according to the same Facebook post. As reported by MLive, mall managers shared photos of the plaque online ahead of Saturday's event in hopes of tracking down the people named on it.
Many of those people showed up. Evelyn LaForge, who was six years old when the capsule was sealed, told MLive she had no idea what she had buried until she watched the item come out and recognized a Red Wings I Want Stanley pennant bearing her own childhood photo. LaForge had taken part in the Giggle Gang, per the same account, the youth club that organized the children's contributions to the capsule.
A Youth Club That Once Had 13,000 Members
The Giggle Gang served as Oakland Mall's official kids club and, at its peak, enrolled more than 13,000 members under age 10, according to Oakland Mall. Mark Fairbrother, who was four years old when the time capsule went in, also belonged to the club and said, per the MLive report, that he had no idea what he had contributed either. Fairbrother's mother recalled that the item may have been a McDonald's Happy Meal toy, though Fairbrother himself could not confirm it.
Not everyone who buried something in 1996 made it back yesterday. Johnny Delly told the outlet he was uncertain what his daughters, Amber and Joselin, had placed inside the capsule, but he still wanted to witness the opening in person; the article notes that Amber and Joselin now live in other states and were not there themselves. Jacie Georgiou, who once interned for the mall's marketing director and helped manage music and dancing at the original 1996 event, said she returned because she felt she had to see the opening through.
What Came Out of the Sign
Alongside the toys and photographs, the capsule held a slice of mid-1990s Metro Detroit media: a Macomb Daily newspaper, a Sterling Heights Sentry newspaper, and a Trinity Ev. Lutheran Church newsletter from Clawson, Michigan. There were also two issues of Circle Track magazine, a Nintendo Cabal instruction booklet, a Game Boy Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters instruction booklet, a Jack and the Beanstalk audio tape, a Disney Pocahontas book, a hand-drawn Beauty and the Beast picture, coins, and a W4 Country 106.7 bumper sticker, per MLive's inventory of the contents.
Oakland Mall organized a full event around the opening rather than a quiet unsealing. The reveal served as the centerpiece of the mall's Take Me Back to the 90s! festival, which ran from noon to 5 p.m. and featured 1996 pop music, classic arcade games, photo contests, and a center-court dance floor, with the capsule opening itself scheduled for 2 p.m., according to LittleGuide Detroit. Mall manager Meghan O'Connor Burskey said the event was about the children and the community.
A Mall That Keeps Reinventing Itself
Oakland Mall first opened in 1968, anchored by J.L. Hudson's and Sears, with Sears having operated as a standalone store on the site since 1965, according to BestAttractions. That original anchor lineup is long gone: Sears closed in 2018, and Macy's, which had operated in the space that opened as J.L. Hudson's, shut its Oakland Mall doors on March 23, 2025, ending nearly 57 years in that location, according to FOX 2 Detroit, leaving JCPenney as the mall's sole remaining department store anchor.
Local investor Mario Kiezi bought the 1.5 million-square-foot mall from CenterCal Properties in March 2022 with plans to revitalize it through experiential entertainment and community events, according to REJournals. Kiezi grew up near the mall and used social media to crowd-source tenant ideas from local residents. As part of that repositioning, the mall converted more than 23,000 square feet of former department store space into Slime Studio in 2024, expanding its interactive family-oriented offerings.
The strategy appears tied to real foot traffic: the mall, located at 14 Mile and John R roads in Troy, spans 105 acres and draws roughly 5 million visitor visits a year across its 116 storefront spaces, according to C & G Newspapers. That endurance stands out regionally; nearby Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights, which operated for nearly five decades, closed permanently in 2024 and is being demolished for a mixed-use project, per Signature Associates. For the people who once dropped a Barbie doll or a hand-drawn picture into a freeway sign as kids, Saturday's opening offered a rare chance to reconnect not just with a childhood keepsake, but with a mall that has kept finding ways to stay open.
