Go To Town

Games People Play

These cities have toy stores where you can feel like a kid again

Toys bring back fond memories — playing Monopoly at your grandmother’s beach cottage, spending rainy afternoons building houses of cards with your cousins, mastering the Hula Hoop, or putting together a model train with your dad. Whether you’re a kid or a grown-up, playing is good. Even Plato said, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” These days, shopping for toys is no longer as simple as circling what we want in the Sears catalog — there are tons of online options plus the mega toy and video game stores. But there’s nothing quite like browsing in an old-fashioned toy store that sells things you can’t find anywhere else. Where to start? We’ve made it easy and found five great toy stores, in five great cities, that will make your inner child come alive.

1

Los Angeles: Whether or not you’re a model train enthusiast, Allied Model Trains (4371 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, 310.313.9353; alliedmodeltrains.com) will send your imagination on a journey. The shop is filled to the brim with replica towns and rural scenes: trains run over bridges, through tunnels, and past water towers, painted storefronts, and sidewalks populated with rows of appropriately scaled people — marrying couples, factory workers, even two men in lederhosen — and their appropriately scaled cats and dogs (and tiny fire hydrants). Of course, Allied stocks a wide range of trains to run through all this scenery — including Lionel, Atlas, and European imports such as Marklin and LGB — and enough track, paint, and parts to keep a kid (or adult) busy for years. Allied, which has been in business since 1946, also features collectible antiques and an on-site Lionel technician. During the holidays, you can enjoy a bit of life-imitating-art serendipity when you look up from the models out to the storefronts of Sepulveda Boulevard in Culver City, which has a vintage, old-time train village appearance itself.

2

Miami: A lifelong Miami resident tells us that Twinkles (1075 Kane Concourse, Bay Harbor Islands, 305.864.1558; twinklesofbayharbor.com) was one of the first stores to carry Webkinz — the little stuffed animals with parallel computer lives. “We try to find toys that aren’t in the big stores,” says Martha Rodriguez, one of Twinkles’ three co-owners (along with Alison Cohen and Lishka Wittels). Being busy mothers (they have eight children among them), the three women take turns running the store, but they travel together to toy and gift shows. They’ve agreed that decisions about every single item sold in the store must be unanimous. In addition to carefully selected toys and games (many imported from Europe) Twinkles sells gift baskets, “candy cakes,” and penny candy. There’s even a machine filled with warm chocolate chip cookies. The owners’ favorite toy from Twinkles? “That’s definitely the Marshmallow Shooter,” says Rodriguez.

3

Pittsburgh: You won’t find any Webkinz or robots at Where the Toys Are, in Canonsburg (45 W. Pike St., 724.745.4599; wherethetoysare.com), just outside Pittsburgh. Owner Phil McEntee, in his 20th year in business, says he does stock a few computer games, but they’re strictly vintage amusements like Donkey Kong and Pong, and they’re probably some of the newest toys in the store. Befitting the shop’s old-fashioned five-and-dime ambience, Where the Toys Are specializes in collectible toys and vintage figurines, especially old mechanical “automatons” — windup or battery-operated figurines that perform little tricks. Though he does an increasing amount of business on the Web, McEntee says he still prefers interacting with customers in person. “What I love,” he says, “is when someone looks at a toy, and until that moment, they hadn’t even remembered they’d had one just like it as a kid. The toys trigger memories, and they’re always happy ones.”

4

London: When London was bombarded during World War II, did the employees of Hamleys blink? No! Five times the shop was damaged, and clerks continued to don their tin hats and serve customers from the front door, taking orders and running back to the store to get toys to hand back. That’s the sort of pluck it takes to keep a store running for almost 250 years. That’s right: William Hamley opened his Noah’s Ark store in 1760. By the 1830s, when Queen Victoria reigned, “Hamleys” was a London landmark. Even the current monarch, Elizabeth II, played with toys purchased there and went on to buy her own children’s toys from the shop. If you can’t get it at Hamleys (188–196 Regent St., 08.70.383.2455; hamleys.com), it probably isn’t worth buying. “There must be similar stores existing in other countries,” says George Knops, who’s been visiting Hamleys since he was a child, “but certainly not elsewhere in the U.K.”

5

Nashville: Phillips Toy Mart, an authentic, old-fashioned mom-and-pop store that’s been in the same family for 62 years, sells oldies but goodies such as Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Radio Flyers, and Frisbees. But it stocks all the newest rages as well: Webkinz, Ugly Dolls, Ziplines, and an array of electronic toys. Carrying more than 20,000 items in a warehouse-sized space, Phillips (5207 Harding Road, 615.352.5363; phillipstoymart.com) also has a fantastic doll section and dress-up area, and specializes in kites as well. Nowadays, Powell Phillips and his sister Cynthia Strinich, children of the original owners, run the store.

Getting There: All the destinations covered in “Go to Town” can be reached by flying Continental Airlines. To book your trip, visit Continental Airlines Vacations at covacations.com.