Our best sellers are Star Wars, Shoguns & Micronauts.

Ever wonder what was selling in 1978? Probably not, but here is Gary (seen below holding a Micronauts Astro Station and Shogun Warriors Dragun), a manager at Bradberry in Decatur IL, explaining the hot-selling toys for 1978.

Hot Toys for 1978

Gary Bradberry Manager
Lionel Play World Decatur, Illinois

Our best-selling items this year are the Star Wars characters, the Shogun [Warriors] and the Micronauts. Of course, we expect something big like this every year, and it’s a good guess that next year we’ll be looking at something coming from a movie like Close Encounters . . . maybe a man from outer space or a flying saucer of some kind.

Along with Star Wars’ toys, Kenner’s Fuzzy Pumper was popular. And I don’t want to forget Chutes Away and Mr. Quarterback for as long as we had them in stock. Other good items are the electronic gadgets, Baby Come Back, computerized football and road race sets. The price of these items (some more than $25) has not been a factor. Customers would pay anything for them, especially during the last four weeks of the year.

We aren’t promoting anything special. We categorize items throughout our store and the average shopper (usually a woman) will buy according to age, whether its dolls or sporting goods. Our #1 items are TV-advertised merchandise. We advertise heavily on radio and TV during the fourth quarter of the year and average two newspaper ads each week. We also run fourmagazine-type ads each year as newspaper supplements.

Business in general? Probably the same as last year: pretty good. This year, however, shoppers seemed to put off their Christmas shopping until the last minute. I guess the economy and lack of funds have some impact. Because of the late shopping trend, some essential items were gone. But customers didn’t seem to mind. They came in to buy and switched to something else when we didn’t have what they were looking for.

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