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Beno’s Toys Christmas book from 1979

Seeing as Christmas and shopping is all that on our minds right now, let’s take a look at the specials offered 36 years ago with the Beno’s Toy flyer. I’ve never heard of this California based chain but I sure recognize the toys like Kenner Star Wars, Play-Doh and a metric ton of classic hand […]

Vintage Toy Store Photos Volume 17

Yes! A new installment of  one of my favorites, vintage toy store photos. A journey back to the days of oddly named department stores and independent mall toy stores and chains that are fondly remembered but sadly mostly gone. Vintage Toy Store Photos Volume 17 covers the US and Canada this time and features appearances […]

A Japanese Toy Store Flyer from the 1970s

It’s no secret I’m fond of vintage toy store flyers but getting them from foreign countries is even sweeter! I can’t read a lick of Japanese but I can spot fun classic 1970s toys like Jumbo Machinders (We called them Shogun Warriors), MicroMan (Micronauts here) and the amazing Henshin Cyborg,check out the 1970s Japanese Toy […]

1975 Christmas Toy Store Flyer

Newspaper circulars for toy stores are a tough thing to find, often thrown out immediately it’s a shame when you realzie what a wonderful window into our world they truly are. Take this one for a store called “Hagensick’s Playroom” (great name) in Wisconsin, which features a veritible “who’s who” of hot items for the […]

Starlog stores in Japan

(click on any photo for an enlargement) Like a lot of 70s kids, I cut my nerdy teeth on Starlog magazine. It was basically my window into a world of wonder that wasn’t available where I grew up. As a struggling student in the 90s, I used to visit the Starlog store in New Jersey […]

Vintage Toy Store Photos Volume 16

In an effort to combat the end of summer blues, I’ve dig deep to the days of Pegboard and regional toy stores to bring the 16th edition of our vintage toy stores feature. Installment 16 features old favorites such as the Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man, Barbie, the Osmonds, Atari, Fisher Price, Mego […]

Vintage Toy Store Photos Volume 15

  Seeing as it’s the site’s birthday, it’s no better time to drop a new installment in what is one of my favorites, vintage toy store photos. A journey back to the days of oddly named department stores and independent mall toy stores and chains that are fondly remembered but sadly mostly gone.  Vintage Toy […]

Ultra Seven crashes into a toy store

Oh my goodness, where to begin? One, this is not only a mall appearance of one of my favourite characters but it’s in a 70s toy store setting.  On top of that it’s in a 70s JAPANESE toy store. Adding to this frenzy is one of my holy grails just sitting on a shelf, the […]

1981 Toys R Us Flyer

Toys R Us is one of the last toy chains we have left and the only one featured on this site that is actually still around. This flyer from December 1981 is a time capsule of what we could have expected under the tree, Barbies, Glamour gals, Atari games, Remco Monsters and Mego Superheroes. It’ll […]

Mattel Creepy Feature Promotion

I recently came across this promotional folder from Mattel full of different concepts for stores to boost sales of (duh) Mattel Toys. The one that most interested me was the Halloween specific teaming of Suckerman, Gre-Gory and Krusher into an end cap called the “Creepy Feature”. While I’m 100% sure this never made it to […]