I found a color booklet in my mailbox today. Oh, Toys"R"Us! It’s a holiday sale. The only people living in this area are the elderly, so the strategy is to get us to buy for our grandchildren. Thickness of 40 pages in letter size. Perhaps they are aiming to recover from COVID-19. When I flipped through it, I saw Tomika Plarail. Yes, Toys"R"Us has a low target age. There was no railroad model. Disappointing. What are you doing to pass on this hobby to your descendants? By the way, I keep failing.
If we get that ad, it will join the rest of the other advertising in the recycle bin. My daughter turns 32 the day after Christmas and she’s the last of that generation. I remember buying diapers at ToyRUs.
The chain opened its first store in Japan in 1991 as part of efforts to break down non-tariff barriers, and it is known that President George Bush visited the opening of the second store. As of 2018, there are 186 stores nationwide (Wikipedia-Japanese). One store was 1.2 mile from my house, and I visited it once, but there were no model railroads. The following model was purchased on US ebay 10 years ago. (my blog post)
Gaaaah! I remember now! I actually have that car. My sister got it for me at a yard sale. It had plastic wheels and horn hooks, one of which was actually mounted upside down.
To my knowledge, that car and a similar Vlassic Pickle boxcar I received at the same time have never run on my layout.
Hobbytowns are still around in the US. They are actually a franchise with each individually owned. They lean heavily to radio control, plastic models, and some toys and vary in regards to how much train stuff they carry. Many don’t carry a lot.
Yeah, it is funny how companys come back as someone finds value in the name. Here in the states we have a lot of these companys, Bombay (not train related) is another that quickly comes to mind.
