There's a 1941 story by Ted Sturgeon (I looked it up, I had remembered it as being by Fred Brown) called "Shottle Bop" about a curious little shop that dealt in strange and magical potions. But his story wasn't the first in this meta-genre; he was actually making use of the conventions of that sort of story--the magical shop--to tell his own.

(A "bottle shop" is what we might call today a liquor store, if modern liquor stores sold patent medicines, too. The title is a spoonerism; the original title had been "Abraxas" before Sturgeon revised the story for publication.)

Later, the musical "Little Shop of Horrors" used a few of those same conventions; and earlier, Charles Dickens may have helped create some of them--or maybe just played with them--in "The Old Curiosity Shop". The curious shop as framing device is very old.

On televison, "Friday the Thirteenth, the Series" featured such a shop as framing device and I think there may have been a recurring shop in some old 'mystery' comic book series but I can't find a reference. I'm certain that Ft13tS was not the first to use the shop as a recurrent device.

But I think the old shop filled with oddities where any magical thing may be found is a creature out of folklore and fairy tales, older than we can know for certain. It's a stock device, like the stranger who arrives at the door after night falls, like three witches meeting by moonlight, like a god travelling in disguise.

We're lucky that Bill Hart created such a durable and flexible version and allows us to use it pretty freely, with only enough stricture that we don't spoil the frame for the next person who wants to use it. :)

- Erin