Monday, November 3, 2008

Trekking around the City

The other day we were trekking around the city the other day, heading back to the Apple store, when we saw the FAO Schwartz store. Of course we had to stop in and take a tour, even though we didn't have any pressing toy shopping needs (otherwise the entire piano scene in Big would have been wasted). The ground floor is actually a little underwhelming: there are board games and stuffed animals, along with a candy store.
The true amazement hits when you go up the escalator to the second floor, where the wonderment starts, as off to the left, you see the Hogwarts store, where you can buy your own Gryffindor scarf or hat, which I jokingly threatened to do for my husband. The store seems to go on forever, there is a LEGO section (be still my dorky child heart), complete with giant LEGO sculptures, right next to the DUPLO and Playskool sections (which the husband had never heard of), which brought back tons of memories.
Through another doorway was the board game room, which contained every which board game ever known to man, including twenty-something versions of Monopoly. The next room was an even bigger trip down memory lane, as it was "the room with all the little plastic figurines." Probably not the actual title, but descriptive nonetheless. Now, I don't mean the little plastic figurines of farm animals that you could buy in the grocery store, but the somewhat higher quality, slightly bendable ones that came from somewhere else, apparently FAO Schwartz (and after some internet searching for photos, Target). What did we see on the shelves but these:
I couldn't believe that they still sell Smurf toys, and now I know that FAO Schwartz has them, and so does Target. Seeing them brought back so many memories. I loved the Smurfs, we even took Smurf vitamins at one point (my mom stopped when she realized that we didn't actually want to eat blue vitamins - I only wanted purple Gargamels).

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