It's only been about a week since news broke that beloved nerdy internet shop ThinkGeek (and its parent company Geeknet) was being purchased by suburban mall nightmare retailer Hot Topic. Not so fast — GameStop, another retail giant that is nearly as reviled as Hot Topic, has just announced that it is purchasing ThinkGeek and Geeknet. The reasoning behind the abrupt change of hands is pretty simple — GameStop offered $20 a share, more than the $17.50 Hot Topic offered. After reviewing both offers, Geeknet decided to go with the higher bidder and pay a termination fee to Hot Topic; GameStop will pick up that cost as part of the acquisition.

There are few details on exactly how Geeknet and ThinkGeek will integrate with GameStop, but the press release annoucning the acquisition does note that GameStop wants to "leverage [Geeknet's] product development expertise to broaden our product offering in the fast-growing collectibles category." It's probably safe to say we'll start seeing more of the toys and oddities that ThinkGeek is known for in GameStop's stores before too long. These new product lines might provide a good compliment to GameStop's plan to start selling "retro" consoles and games — plenty of ThinkGeek's catalog could be classified as retro and nostalgic, so there's definitely some potential crossover there. Let's just hope that GameStop doesn't start offering terrible preorder or trade-in deals for ThinkGeek toys.