Sorry a small handful of online retailers does not a useful currency make.

I know there are plenty of proponents(early adopters) for LTC on this board, but as someone who took a break following crypto during it's inception and came back later I really don't see what's innovative about it at all from a non "miner profit" based perspective.

It's asic proof, great so asic miners will never care about it.  It's "faster" than bitcoin, but not fast enough to make a big difference especially compared to the nearly instant speed of the recent alt clones.  It's main saving grace is it was one of the first scrypt coins so it was adopted by tons of GPU miners looking to avoid the upcoming ASIC mining wave in Bitcoins.  I just don't see that being enough to keep it afloat when every day new scrypt coins come out that offer improvements, especially when it doesn't have the name recognition and community/retailer support of Bitcoin.