Thursday, March 15, 2018

Third Millennium Shopping

News today that Toys R Us is liquidating all their stores. The retail landscape has changed so drastically in the last decade or so that such a turn of events is hardly surprising. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I was even in a big box toy store, although there is one just a couple of miles from my home. A toy store is always much more fun with kids, and the kids in my life are either too old or too far away to go shopping with me. Still, I think it's kind of a loss.

When I was a kid, the big toy store near us was Kiddie City, and the times our parents took us there were always special. I remember shopping for a sand box, a swing set, birthday bikes, and skates. Floor to ceiling shelves lined aisle after endless aisle, miraculously filled with real toys that until then had only been the stuff of technicolor TV commercials. There was New Born Thumbelina, Rock'em Sock'em Robots, Marvel the Mustang, stacks of Easy Bake Ovens, Playdough Factories, and Light Brites.

Oh, I have embraced our new shopping where everything in the world is available with free 2 day shipping. It's thrilling, but occasional disappointment is necessarily built into that deal. Of course there are instant printable return labels and the option to drop your box at the nearest shipping store, where it is added to a mountain of other anonymous brown cartons, each one containing an item that wasn't quite right.

Sort of the opposite of a toy store, really.

4 comments:

  1. Your description of those old toy stores is right on. Do people even buy sandboxes anymore? I still love those Rock'em Sock'em Robots.

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  2. We didn't even have a big box Toy store until I was in high school. I did enjoy shopping at one when my girls were younger. Sad what the younger generations are going to be missing out on.

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  3. What nostalgia you capture in this post. With the list of toys contrasting with the convenience of Amazon, I can totally relate.

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  4. There's something magical about the toys we loved when we were young. I LOVED my easy bake over. Thanks for the memories!

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