sulking in stores

[prickvixen]

Yesterday I went to Drug Barn, and there, among the cheap cast plastic toys and crummy stuffed animals, were ten boxes of Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, still in their shrinkwrap, for 99 cents each.

L'Eggs pantyhose no longer come in plastic eggs... so they no longer have an excuse for that goofy name.

You can no longer buy a Nerf ball by itself, at least not at Toys 'R Us. You have to buy some sort of brightly-colored plastic sporting arena in a box if you happen to want the Nerf ball that comes along with it.

Toys 'R Us also doesn't seem to sell, like, actual toys. By this I mean that you have to look pretty damned hard to find anything that isn't a plastic sculpture or electronic or both. And sometimes they'll sell electronics that you can get in the dollar store for like 1/10 as much. And Toys 'R Us never puts anything on sale... except tie-ins to movies that bombed. So this week we have stuff from Van Helsing, the Hulk movie, and Atlantis in the clearance aisle.

There used to be a Babies 'R Us a few doors down from the Toys R' Us, but they closed it and shoved all its contents into the back of the toy store. How bad do you have to screw up to go out of business when your demographic is people who breed?

Comments

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Don't L'Eggs come in boxes contrived to resemble the old egg-shaped packaging, vaguely?

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Vaguely. They more closely resemble milk cartons.

Toys just aren't Toys, anymore.

[vixapede.livejournal.com]

When I was little, I had toys. Worse, I had a toy *box*. If one were to look in that box, back in the dim dead (maybe) 80s, one would have seen a Speak'n Spell as the only electronic toy. Rubik's Cube, a marble obstacle course set made from wood blocks, a bunch of transformers (but I never got Megatron or Starscream, and I loved them best) and go-bots... you dig? *toys*

I went into Toys'R Us once last year, and nearly wept when I saw what the toys of this day. Toys now (to me) seem like they are either *entirely* pointless (example: a scary toy I saw called "Jibba Jabba" I think) or *somehow* educational. I could be off, but it seems like that very important middle gtround that almost ALL of my own toys fell into... is gone.

Toys too now seem to have obligations of society attached to them...?

Re: Toys just aren't Toys, anymore.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I have a Speak & Read, which someday I will twist into an infernal musical instrument.

Re: Toys just aren't Toys, anymore.

[vixapede.livejournal.com]

http://penguin.menagerie.tf/~vixapede/music/other/EK-SPELL.IT

check that out. WinAMP should be able to play that. If not playable just let me know and I'll give you an .mp3. If you can't hear that file, beieve me, if you ever loved a Speak'N Spell, you might want to.

BTW...

Transformers!

[ocean-state.livejournal.com]

They're coming out with reissues of the original ("G1") Transformers toys, you know. Nice sturdy things with die-cast metal, too. Unfortunately, Starscream and Megatron haven't been released yet, though I can't imagine that popular main characters like those two wouldn't get toys. There are quite a few nice Transformers toys around, but you'll probably have better luck at Wal-Mart or K-B Toys. Toys R Us has disappointed me one too many times.

Re: Transformers!

[ocean-state.livejournal.com]

My bad-- they did reissue Starscream, although it's not listed among the reissues on Amazon.com. So prolly the original Megatron has a toy out as well.

I know, I'm a huge nerd. :)

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Postvixen and I also have noted the sad death of Toys R Us as a store where you could find cool, weird, cheap things from the peripheries of capitalism. Now everything is a movie tie-in. Suck.
I am amused at the name "Drug Barn". We don't have those here, and I suspect the mental image those two words bring to mind is very far away from the reality.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

See, now I'm getting this image of a redneck in a hayloft knocked out on cough syrup...

...not as bad as Dress Barn.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

The clothing at Dress Barn is just about as bad as the name. I have no idea who shops there, but I certainly don't. I tried, to be honest. Their styles were just... ew.

As far as the death of Babies R Us, I have two words: Baby Gap.

[zrath.livejournal.com]

I mourn the passing of decent die-cast toys.
You know, like Dinky Toys, Corgi Toys, the old Matchbox (Lesney Products).
The last decent die-cast planes I got my mitts on were the "Force One" ones made by ERTL.
I have almost two of everything from that line.

Corgi is still around, but they make overpriced re-issues of their old stuff, or overpriced "collectors" die-cast toys.

If anybody deserves to have their stuff re-issued, it's Dinky Toys.
They had the license for all the Gerry Anderson shows, so they made toys for UFO, Thunderbirds, Space 1999, etc...
I still have my Eagle Transport, it's my favorite die-cast toy ever.
They almost made kick-ass airplanes with battery-powered propellers.
They made a Stuka that included a metal bomb that you could place a cap in, so when you dropped it, it would go "Bang" when it hit the ground.
F-4 Phantom, Hawker Harrier, Spitfire, Thunderbolt, Sepecat Jaguar, NASA helicopter with Apollo capsule, Mini-Moke with airdrop package.
Dinky was the coolest.