My outing to the toys stores - what a suprise!

The other day I decided I would go look around toy stores and see what was new and what I might need. You have to keep in mind, we do not have kids but my Bride tells me I am childlike and compares me to a 12-year-old pretty often. I thought I would start with the Toys-R-us close to our house. On my way home from the beach this morning I noticed that it was closed. I used Yahoo yellow pages and looked them up to see where they had moved. Seems lots of places just move because their facility is getting older and instead of sprucing the place up, they pull stakes and move onto a newer facility. Anyway, I looked and it listed three stores, the one that I knew was closed and two others. I called the number for the closed one anyway, maybe they kept the same number, NOT. This line has been disconnected I was told by the electronic voice on the other end of the line. Undeterred I call the next closest one, and that number was also out of service. I am beginning to think maybe Toy-R-Us has gone out of business. I call the third number, this one is in Orange Park, about a 40 minute drive for me but they are open for business and the store will be ready to receive customers at 10am. Great I think, I will make the trip because I want to look at the toys and see what I might need. I pack up my stuff and off I go to Orange Park.

I pull up to the store and to tell you the truth I am not sure if this store is open anymore either. It is in much the same disrepair as the store I saw in the morning, in need of a facelift and most assuredly needing a paint job. I wondered why they might let the store get to looking that bad, it was obvious that no maintenance had been done in quite some time. All that from my first impression and I was not even out of my jalopy yet – what was I in for? Once inside I was pleased that it was clean and well organized, not what I was expecting from with the exterior appearance looking so poor. I thought I would make the rounds, walk up and down each isle looking at all the goodies available to our youths today. To my delight, some of the first items I came across were the Lego kits. I was impressed with how far the simple little building block of my youth had come. We had Lego sets when I was a kid, lots of them actually but nothing like the ones that are available now. We were happy with the set that had little doors and windows and now they have Indiana Jones sets and even a Lego digital camera. I kid you not. They have a Lego digital camera, it costs 50 bucks and has enough storage capacity for 80 pictures. Seems weird that a toy that lets you add things together to build more than the sum of the parts would not have a Lego digital camera that could be expanded, with the additional add on, to hold more than 80 pictures. At least I would think.

As I traveled around the store I began to notice one inescapable fact, the marketing machines drive the entire kids toy market. I saw things like a miniature Cadillac Escalade with the big 24 inch wheels. I saw all manner of items that were driven by a movie, or in some cases the movies were being driven by the toys. This is a new revelation to me, not having kids I did not know. I saw X-men Wolverine action figures and Match Box cars from the movie Cars. I saw a 1/6 scale battery powered hummer, with the 24volt system that even had a freaking Ipod docking station in it. On the same isle I saw a guitar hero computer game right next to the actually guitars. I saw Star Trek characters that had one piece of the Enterprise, you would have had to buy like 20 action figures to get the all the pieces. Seems that a person named Dora is just about as popular as some character called sponge Bob, he wears square pants evidently and lives in a pineapple under the sea from what I can tell from the packaging. I did finally find one isle that had toys I could relate to in it. A Nerf football and an actual basketball, there were skateboards and Frisbees not much shelf space but there it all was. I had NO idea that parents were being targeted and barraged with a tactical marketing plan that would have made Operation Overlord look like child’s play. Operation Overlord was the name of the plan for the invasion of France during WWII. Anyway how can a parent withstand a child who sees the movie and then has to have the toys and then they go back and forth the other way – toy driving the movie and vice versa. To my surprise I could not find a GI Joe, I hear they are making a movie about him so I thought for sure he would be here – nothing. Another thing that struck me was the fact I was in there just about 5 minutes short of an hour and not one of the employees asked if I needed help and even more surprising to me, averted their eyes when I was leaving. No come again, no have a nice day, no eat shit and die – no nothing.

I left the store somewhat confused, I decided to go across the street to the mall and go toy looking over there. I entered through Sears and made my way onto the promenade, somewhat excited about the possibilities. I walked the length of that mall and the only thing close to a toy store was a place called the Game Stop. It was an electronic gaming store, so kinda a toy store. After wandering around in there I started wondering – WHY. I looked at video games to play golf and tennis, with elaborate controllers that provide feedback to the player. I saw exercise games, EA Sport active and a cardio workout, all done on a little foot pad thingamajig. I also saw one with a steering wheel so you could play speed racer and the need for speed. I even saw something called Wii speak, this allows you to talk to the people you are playing with. I was lost now, and even more pleased I did not have kids. I do not believe I could do it and highly admire those who are parents. I think I would have to be more like my parents were, if you wanted to learn how to play tennis or golf, we got a racket and a club and we went outside and played with them. For a workout we, well worked out. No expensive video game machine needed for that, outside – run and play and ride bike. So as for the steering wheel and speed racer, we built go-carts and mini-bikes and actually went outside and played with them. Now as far as the need for a Wii speak – there was no need, we were actually playing with our friends. They were right there, having fun with us and making fun of us if we messed up.

Bride and I like playing with toys, just like coloring in coloring books it is great fun. I wish we had sold our racecar set. We a bought a slot car track at a yard sale many years ago and we built it into quite a system. It required three power supplies, we had track running through three rooms, and we had some HOT cars. I added additional pins to keep them glued to the track, I modified the little motors windings to get more poot out of them. Doing so ruined the bearings much quicker but it was fun in the short term and the cars were cheap to replace. Not sure why we sold that set but I think I will start looking for another one.

If slot cars are not your gig, get a Nerf ball and play outside with it.