Where did you buy your toys?

[dogman67]

Where did you (your partents) buy your toys back in the day. I got most of mine from K-Mart, Sears, or Wilsons....

[Bionic Joe]

Basicaly from these three stores GRANT CITY/ J.M FIELDS/ TWO GUYS non of these stores are still in bussines today

[RussG]

Being in Silverton Oregon only two stores had toys, Sprouse and a local store call T-Mart (sort of a bargan store 99% of the time it sucked!)

Now about once every other week we would go to Salem, there I would get most of my toys at a northwest store chain called GI Joes until 1982 when they quit selling toys :(

Jafco (later called BEST) was one the the real hot spots for me as a kid, they had more of the hard to find figures. I got many GI Joes figure here ...it's also where I found my Crimson Guard

Wards was a place I would get an item once in a great while.

in 1985 Salem got a Toys R Us, from then on that was my main spot.

[toys2cool]

mine was Toys r us, lionel playworld, there was 1 K B toys in the mall and woolworths

[Hulk]

Sears Wish Book, Woolworth's, Drug Stores, wherever my mom made the mistake of taking me that also sold toys, and eventually Toys R Us

[cjefferys]

I got a lot of toys, including my first Megos, at Zellers, a Canadian department store chain that still exists (but the ones near me are barely holding on against the competition from Walmart). I remember getting my first Star Wars figure from Robinsons (a Canadian dept store chain that no longer exists). Later figures were purchased mostly at K-mart and Rosbergs (an awesome old department store in downtown Niagara Falls that sadly closed up years ago. They had an amazing toy selection). Once in a while my mother took us across the border to Child's World in the US. Those stores never made it to Canada, and Toys R Us wasn't in Canada yet, so when I went to a huge toy store like Child's World, I was in absolute awe, we had no stores like that. I always wished my mother took us there more often.

[nvmbrsdoom5]

Gosh I bought toys from so many different places, and it's funny how many of them aren't around anymore, at least not in my area....

Sears toy department and the Wishbook catalog were big for me, bought many toys of all kinds through there.
JcPenny and Service Merchandise catalogs were another mainstay.
The Toys R Us in South Chicago (that was called Bargain Town Toys R Us for some reason), Calumet City, and the one in Merrillville, were favorites of mine. As well as the KayBee and Child's World stores in Merrillville.
Kresge and K-Mart were some early places I bought alot of toys from I recall.
Venture and Zayre....I specifically remember getting alot of Star Wars and 3-3/4 GI Joes from there in the early 80s.
In my immediate neighborhood, I often bought toys (especially Mego, SW, and 12" GI Joes) from Tru-Value and Ben Franklin. I remember buying quite a few SW figures from the Jewel/Osco down the street, but I think they stopped carrying them by the time ESB came out.
I even managed to order some figures from Heroes World catalogs as well!

[dogman67]

Oh yeah, sometimes Sears, Ace Hardware, and JC Pennys. And also a place I remember, which is actually still in business, which I cant believe. A place called the PLAYPEN, which had an awesome toy selection. One of the best Star Wars displays I ever saw back then....

[kingdom warrior]

I had a lot of local merchants who carried Megos in the 70's it was a popular toy and many stores had them in my old neighborhood to my Mother's dismay...Thank goodness she knew this would sedate me and so she would buy me them to keep me out of her hair.
But there were stores that had the most and I would look forward to going to.

Rico's Toy store-...now a 99 cent store it was abandoned since the mid eighties someone in the past year bought the property and reopened the store I've been planning to go back just to see the inside of the store.

Buy Rite Department store-.....This was the other big store in my old neighborhood....tons of mego's they had their Mego's behind an elevated glass shelf. A worker would be on a ladder during the christmas season and he would bring down whatever figure you were going to buy. This was done during The Box era to avoid people from stealing them.

WoolWorths-I got many Megos here and many DC treasury editions
Toys r us
JcPenny
Korvettes

[toysrus]

For me it was mainly toys r us - look at my name. When I was 18 I found out that many toys had value $$$, and I heard a rumor that the toys r us in my neighborhood had a huge warehouse that had old toys just sitting there. To make a long story short back in 1988 I got a part time job at that toys r us, it took me like 4 months to be moved from the floor to the warehouse, anyway the old toy in the warehouse rumor was true, to an extent. I found 2 micronauts, but not on the micronaut card, some other name, it was a time traveler. I also found some old GI-joes from 1984 or so, and some baseball cards dated back 8 years, now since they were not new merchandise the store had to put them in clearance, I knew the lady who took care of that, she priced them at 99 cents each, I bought all of them plus the baseball cards. I sold most of that stuff on ebay. The micronauts sold for 100 bucks each.

I ended up working there another 7 months or so, hiding toys that I thought might someday hold value, when they didn't I left them there, I did have first picks though when the cases of new toys came in. Eventually I got tired of my boss, and went to lunch at burger king and never returned to that job until it was pay day to get my check. I can still remember eating dinner that night , the phone rang, it was toys r us, my Dad said oh he quit- bye and hung up!!

Enough of my toys r us life story, I also found many toys at Korvettes, consumers, sears & TSS.