I think you’ll like this one – a page-by-page look at the Toys R’ Us ‘Out of this World’ Toy Book, covering He-Man, Centurions, Inhumanoids, She-Ra, Lazer Tag, and a whole lot more. Enjoy. Suck my bandwidth.
That Catalog is for the area I live in (Charlotte, NC), and the store on Independence Blvd is still there. I remember getting this catalog
My sister and I actually got the "Woodmaster Solid Wood" toybox on the last page for christmas that year. I know I had the Alfie II, but I think I got it a couple of years before this catalog came out. That and the Teddy Ruxpin caused my family to ban "Talking Toys" from coming into the house and taking the batteries of ones that already were there.
The Independence Blvd store is the only Toys R Us in town that hasn’t moved 100 times in search of the perfect location. But we all really wish it would. Buying toys from there always involved a trip across town into one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on one of the most dangerous streets to a store that looked like an evil Circus/Castle on a hill in a sea of parking lot filled with large birds that crapped on everything that stopped moving for a millisecond. Once you passed through the double doors and went around the maze of seasonal toys, you’d make it into the dark, dirty confines of the store.
I swear those blackmarket stalls in Sci-Fi movies are based on the Toys R Us electronics department. There was no lighting except in the Display cases.
The Circuit City in the same shopping center is set up the same way. The computer section in that store is in what I swear used to be a men’s room.
Ah, the Fluppy Dogs, the Fisher Price tape recorder, the Little People Main Street set. So many memories…
But the main memory this brought back was the Christmas all I wanted was the She-Ra crystal castle…but I didn’t get it. Imagine my jealousy when I found out my cousin had gotten it this year. Grrrr…
Anyway, thanks, Matt for this article! Nothing else has brought back so much to me!
and the magic vaccum WAS magic. not only did the dustballs fly around, it lit up!
Ghosted by Cara @ 05/02/2003 9:08 PM EDT
Great article, Matt. But why no coverage (and I mean AT ALL) of the semi-popular mid-90’s toy fad Pauly Shore’s "My Buuuuuuu-ddy" doll?
Ghosted by Kev @ 05/03/2003 9:33 AM EDT
Great article, Matt. That was pure magic. Looks like you skipped the same pages as a kid that I always skipped. Actually, those pages always made me kinda sad, because I knew the good stuff what pretty much done.
Erm… just wanted to point out that, if this catalogue was published in November 1986, then it came *after* the Transformers movie was released in North American theatres (August 8th, 1986), so it really doesn’t explain the lack of Transformers toys in the catalogue… weird.
In Canada, or, at least Montreal, we didn’t get Toys R’ Us until 1986, so, when I was a kid, my book of Christmas dreams was the Consumers Distributing catalogue, this big, thick book we received around September each year that had some 40-50 odd pages of toys alone… though this represented everything in the store and not just select items, since Consumers Distributing was this weird sort of store where, to purchase an item, you had to fill out a little slip of paper and then hand it in at the counter (you couldn’t handle the merchandies). It went defunct in 1996.
Damn, this article took me back. My sisters and I had about half the She-Ra stuff, and we wanted the castle so bad we could taste it. We had Sweet Secrets, too. I once tried to "hypnotize" my sister with a Sweet Secret during a car trip to make her act less annoying. She pretended it worked for about ten minutes.
Ghosted by starwenn @ 08/16/2003 11:03 PM EDT
One of my favorite things about the TRU Catalog, is it’s efforts to enforce ‘equality’
if you look close enough, there’s always one retarded kid, and one wheelchair bound kid….
and sometimes you can score a double-whammy by having a retarded kid on crutches…..
ahh, TRU, your utopia is one we aspire to…..
I think I once saw the Quadruple-Hat-Trick of fucked up kids in one of the old catalogs too…….
a black retarded girl on crutches…
she’s black, she’s retarded, she’s on crutches, and she’s a girl….
I bet TRU had a hard time letting her contract go….without the NAACP, and the ACLU suing their collective asses off!
Ghosted by Tai @ 02/17/2004 12:44 PM EST
Geek & kpants:
I had a green one that looked kindof like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. There was a black one too, and I think it was more of a monster-devil(maybe) face. I remember, because my mom wouldn’t let us get that one. I’m glad there are two other people besides me who remember this thing.
Ghosted by Seeth_Ransome @ 09/05/2006 3:39 PM EDT
Geek & kpants:Seeth_Ransome
I don’t know if you guys are still checking this blog, or still looking for the answer , but the name of the toyline is “Rocks and Bugs and Things” This nearly drove me insane but I managed to finally get the name after scouring the web. Hope I helped.
Ghosted by ghostbuggy @ 07/02/2007 1:37 PM EDT
i liked working in toy r us it was fun looking at kidz play with toys
it brings back memories of toys (horrible toys!)
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That Catalog is for the area I live in (Charlotte, NC), and the store on Independence Blvd is still there. I remember getting this catalog
My sister and I actually got the "Woodmaster Solid Wood" toybox on the last page for christmas that year. I know I had the Alfie II, but I think I got it a couple of years before this catalog came out. That and the Teddy Ruxpin caused my family to ban "Talking Toys" from coming into the house and taking the batteries of ones that already were there.
The Independence Blvd store is the only Toys R Us in town that hasn’t moved 100 times in search of the perfect location. But we all really wish it would. Buying toys from there always involved a trip across town into one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on one of the most dangerous streets to a store that looked like an evil Circus/Castle on a hill in a sea of parking lot filled with large birds that crapped on everything that stopped moving for a millisecond. Once you passed through the double doors and went around the maze of seasonal toys, you’d make it into the dark, dirty confines of the store.
I swear those blackmarket stalls in Sci-Fi movies are based on the Toys R Us electronics department. There was no lighting except in the Display cases.
The Circuit City in the same shopping center is set up the same way. The computer section in that store is in what I swear used to be a men’s room.