Toy store

"In a way the establishment in 1760 of what, as , was to become the world's most famous toyshop, symbolised the new world that opened up for British toy makers from the middle of the eighteenth century. It was only one of a new toy outlets established in London in the years after 1750. By 1822 the capital possessed no fewer than seventy-one retail toy shops and thirteen wholesalers. ... Such was the proliferation by 1800 that some degree of specialisation emerged, with at least two concentrating solely on ."

"Children of my day, even in s, had very little in the way of toys. Toy shops were almost unknown; modern mechanical playthings, which furnish their own activity, had hardly come into existence. One might, of course, buy oneself a hobby-horse, but generally speaking an individually selected knotty stick from the woods, upon which imagination might work freely, was dearer to the heart. We were not observers, as children today seem to be from birth, of their own accord; and not utilizers, as they are brought up to be; we were creators. Our knotty stick, for all working purposes, in appearance and as far as actual horsepower went, came nearer to and eight-hoofed , or to himself, than any magnificently decorated horse from a smart store."

"I don't remember ever going to a toy store as a child. Although specialty toy stores existed in major cities like New York and Chicago as early as the 1860s, in the towns and suburbs where I lived no store had the primary purpose of selling toys to kids. ... I remember s that sold electric train sets and model-building kits, s where you could buy bikes and baseballs, and s and s that had toy departments, but these stores sold merchandise primarily to adults, not to children. Something radical happened in the intervening thirty-pls years in the marketing and selling of toys. Giant toy stores now dot the landscape, offering huge selections and low prices on toys made all over the world."