An independently owned toy store in Rosemead, CA made shopping for toy cars a process and an adventure! This is where my collection really got started
In the days before globalization and corporatism imposed a monolithic sameness on every neighborhood in the country, locally owned independent toy stores were the norm rather than the exception. Toys R Us did exist back then, but was not yet the juggernaut they eventually became, and the big box stores of the late ‘70’s and ’80’s, of which there were many (Zody’s, GemCo, FedCo, Best, to name just a few) were not engaging in the brutal winner-take-all tactics that we’ve become so used to in the age of Walmart. And anyway, most of these big box stores had toy sections that left much to be desired, the only exception being K-Mart, which, like most of the mall chains of the era, sold Matchbox cars in crummy blister packages. In order to get Matchbox cars in boxes, you had to goto to the independent neighborhood toy stores, and of the many I can remember from my childhood, the best of the best was a sprawling single-story standalone building on Valley Blvd in Rosemead, California called ToyTown. It has been defunct for years, and a Google search of the address-8914 Valley Boulevard-will reveal an Asian furniture store currently called AMBC Furniture.
Some people may have heard of “Baby ToyTown,” which was located just a couple doors down and which is apparently still extant (or was recently, at least) and for those who are wondering, yes, it was owned by the same people, but when I was a kid, “Baby Toytown” was a small store; it was Toytown that was the big draw. The store was famous in the San Gabriel Valley for its huge selection of sports equipment and bikes (they repaired them as well as sold them, and my first bike, a Murray, came from this store), but none of that interested me; I went to Toytown for another reason: a huge selection of previous generation, out of production Matchbox Superfasts that were sold in BOXES!
As I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, I was a gearhead from the moment I left the womb and many of my earliest toys were toy cars, since that’s all I ever wanted; however, like most boy children, I was destructive, and thus very few of the toy cars I had before roughly the age of 7 are still around today. But at age 7, in roughly 1978, having moved back to CA with my folks who settled in a lovely suburb of Pasadena called Temple City, I discovered Toytown, and there I found a stash of Matchbox cars dating from the very early 70’s. These were “2nd generation” Superfasts that were almost all out of production by 1978, and they featured the wire axles and plastic braces which were becoming extinct by that time as Lesney followed the Hot Wheels model of switching to thicker “floating” axles. When I found this huge stash of unsold, out of production inventory, models which were unavailable at any other store around, I stopped trashing my toy cars and began to collect them.
“Salesman’s Samples” – Toytown’s Matchbox car lot
Toytown had a very unusual-I daresay unique, since I never saw it anywhere else-way of displaying their selection of Matchbox cars. Rather than having stacks of boxed models out in the open for the kids to mess up, or a neat company-branded acrylic display case to keep them safe, they kept them stacked behind a counter accessible to “employees only”, and took a single example of each model and fixed it to the top of its box either with a rubber band or a strip of scotch tape, and put these “display models” in a glass case. I had to “request” that a store worker open the case and take out the model-attached to the box-for me to examine. In this way these “display models” acted like dealer demonstrators to let a prospective buyer take a closer look and decide if this was, indeed, the model that he or she wanted. It was customary to ask for the “demonstrator” by series number: “Can I see number 14, please,” I would ask the shop babe, at which point the often disgruntled worker would pull out the “sample” of the Iso Grifo, secured to its box by a piece of tape, usually displayed with its doors open. If I decided I wanted it, I would affirm the choice, and the “demo” would be put back into the case and a pristine boxed model would be pulled from the stock behind the counter and taken by said employee to the register and held until I was ready to leave and mom was ready with her checkbook. It was quite an experience-shopping for a toy car with a tire kick and a test drive-and although sometimes it took some searching to find an employee to help me, these early “car shopping adventures” are actually some of the fondest memories I have from childhood. There were a couple of cases when I was lucky enough to be the kid who got the very last one, and without any additional stock on hand, they sold me the “display model.” The decision to affix the cars to the boxes with scotch tape turned out to be a bad choice, as I have one model-my pink #5 Lotus Europa-which has a large chunk of paint missing from the bonnet, as the paint peeled off when the tape was removed by the sales rep, but even with this damage, it was the last one they had, and I couldn’t get it anywhere else, so as bummed as I may have been about the loss of paint, I took the car anyway!
I can’t possibly say how many cars I bought at ToyTown in the years between roughly 1978 and 1980 because I bought multiple copies of each model whenever possible, but I know I got nearly every single model they had; these were the seeds of my collection, and not only do I still have many of the toys I got at this store, but I still have most of the boxes they came in, many still with the bright orange price tags on the end flaps from the days before bar codes. Of course I still got current production models from blister packages at K-Mart and Toys R Us and other stores from time to time-they were cheaper, after all (Toytown retailed their Matchboxes at a lofty $1.49, a high price by today’s standards and certainly so in 1978!) and I liked some of the then-current models well enough. And yet, even at the age of 7, I knew that the cars I was buying at this store were something special.
A lot of my original Toytown “collector’s items” are worse for wear-I was still playing with my cars back then, almost every day in fact-but although they are all common variations of their castings and none are in mint condition, these are the ones I’ve owned the longest and the ones that have the most meaning to me; I made every little scratch and chip on them myself, and many of their axles are wound with threads from the carpeting of the 2 houses I grew up in. These are the ones I will never sell, and I still look at the contents of my first ever 48-car case with nostalgia; there are a lot of memories attached to those little toys.
Sadly I have been unable to find any decent photographs of Toytown online; there’s a couple of images of plastic model kits on display inside the store from the late ‘60’s but they are close-ups that don’t show much of the surroundings; I can’t find a single image of the store as I remember it, either from the inside or the outside. If there’s anyone out there who may be reading this who remembers Toytown in the late ‘70’s or early 80’s I’d love to hear from you, especially if you have pictures. It would be a real kick in the ass to see a photo of that “Matchbox counter”, which was located just to the left of the main entrance to the store.
In addition to Toytown there were two other independent toy stores in the Southern California area where I grew up that offered Matchbox cars in boxes, and although none of them had the huge selection of out of production models that Toytown had, I did manage to find a few obsolete models at these other stores: does anyone else remember Macabob’s Toys on Colorado Blvd in Pasadena? Or how about The Toy Factory on Las Tunas Drive in Arcadia? I got my #61 Blue Shark and my #44 Boss Mustang, respectively, at each of these stores, since these were a couple of models Toytown didn’t have.
Although I’ve found no images of the store as I remember it, I did find a short blurb on the internet about the store’s founder, Murray Zwick. This reminds me of another memory, one of the owner’s real car; he had maroon Jaguar XJS V-12 that he used to park in a special space in the back parking lot surrounded by a fence, and I never missed a chance to get a look at it because back in ’78 there weren’t too many of those cars around, even in SoCal (or at least not in the neighborhood I lived in!) I can remember thinking what a life that must be: to own the coolest toy store in the world and then be able to drive home from it in that every night! Sure seemed like “the life” to my 7 year old mind!
As a last blast of memory (and perhaps more than anyone else may care to know, but what the hell) I can list from memory every out of production Matchbox model I got at Toytown that I couldn’t get anywhere else at the time. By series number, my first examples of the following models came from this store when I was but a wee lad, and in almost all cases I still have them:
- #1 Mod Rod – garden variety with 2nd Cat label and black wheels
- #3 Monteverdi Hai – “3” label, unpainted base
- #5 Lotus Europa – met. pink, wide wheels (display model)
- #6 Mercedes Tourer – yellow-orange, 5 spoke squ wheels
- #7 VW Golf – Lime green, 5ar wheels
- #8 DeTomaso Pantera – side labels, unpainted base
- #9 AMX Javelin – lime green, yellow int, black scoop, unpainted base, 5 spoke squ wheels
- #12 Big Bull – common version
- #13 Baja Buggy – red exhaust pipes
- #14 Iso Grifo – ice blue, wide wheels
- #19 Road Dragster- both the red AND the magenta versions!
- #22 Freeman Inter-City Commuter – Dk met red
- #27 Lamborghini Countach – red Streaker with blue windows
- #29 Racing Mini – Orange, green border label
- #32 Maserati Bora – 5 spoke squ wheels
- #37 Soopa Coopa – blue
- #40 Vauxhall Guildsman – both the original pink version and the red “Streaker” version!
- #45 Ford Group 6 – dk met red, #45 labels
- #52 Dodge Charger Mk III – green, red base
- #54 Ford Capri, purple, 5 spoke squ wheels
- #58 Woosh-N-Push – yellow, #2 label, red interior
- #59 Mercury Park Lane Fire Chief Car – hood & door labels (display model)
- #60 Lotus Super 7 – yellow “Streaker”
- #62 Renault 17TL
- #64 Slingshot Dragster – steel blue with both thin and wide front wheels
- #66 Mazda RX500 – red “Streaker”
- #67 Hot Rocker – lime green
- #75 Alfa Carabo – met pink, yellow base
You have an amazing memory for these important things. I enjoyed reading about this and it brought back my own memories of Howard Griffins Land of Toys. Much the same it was an institution in my home town and a part of Christmas as essential as a tree. Every year they would put up a massive model train set Christmas village and that was where I first fell in love with train sets. They also had the largest section of toy cars, tons more Matchbox and Hot Wheels than any other store but also Tomica, Siku, and others, though I don’t recall Corgi or Dinky there. There two aisles of toy cars was a true wonder of the world. When I would have to go to dentist or the doctor, it was there that mom would take me to get a present for being brave. Your post brought back some good memories and thank you for sharing yours!
doEvery bike I had as a kid was from Toytown. I loved the old smell as I walked in. We also got all our dolls from there. I loved roaming the isles. It seemed huge when we were kids but really was a small place. I believe we also got our doughboy pool from there. Great memories!
OMG! The SMELL! So there IS someone else out there who remembers it! Wasn’t that a weird smell? So hard to describe; sort of like a cross between a musty attic and fresh plastic? I never knew what caused it (I always figured it was packing material of some kind) but it was definitely unique, it was “the smell of ToyTown,” and I’d swear that if I stuck my nose inside those Matchbox car boxes I was buying, I could still detect that smell lingering in the cardboard. Its gone now, of course, 40 years on, as is the store. I’m sure you’re right about the size of the place; it seemed huge to me, but I was 7! If I saw it now it would probably seem small. It was a maze of aisles of fun, though, and I’ll never forget that bike section, which seemed like it went on forever! Thanks for commenting; great to hear someone else who remembers the place!
I was a part-time worker at Toytown from 1965 to1969. I worked summers and through X-mas. It was owned by Murray Zwick and his family. They were very kind and seemed to like to help young people from the community, especially those who were continuing their education. (I graduated from college while working there.) Some people actually made a living there. Older ladies worked as cashiers and there was one whose duty was to keep the game shelves stocked. Beside bicycles I think the store was known for selling electric trains. I still have my Lionel set. At X-mas they had a layaway offer that was very popular. The pick-ups kept us very busy the last week. Over the back entrance was a sign reading, “Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa, for keeping us in business.” I think the family owned several properties on their block. Probably made a ton of money from them.
Thanks so much for this reply, its great to hear from someone else out there who remembers the place! Your tenure there pre-dates my time, but I bet it hadn’t changed all that much from the time you worked there and the time I shopped there. I actually do remember that back entrance, as there was a time after we moved into our first house that my dad had to drive our wagon around the back to pick up a sandbox he had bought that was brought out to the car. I confess I don’t remember that sign over the door, but I remember every aspect of the building, including the customer service counter at the back of the store which I bet is where the layaway pick-ups were done! Amazing to think there was a time when people could live on what they made working in a toy store; how times have changed! I’m sure the Zwick family did well for themselves, and good on them for it; the kind of life you describe seems to be a thing of the past now, which is why its nice to remember it.
Is there any chance that you have any photographs of the inside of the store when you were there, that you might be willing to scan and email me? I’ve been looking for something like that, and if I could get my hands on some, I’d love to a do a follow-up post on the history of Toytown!
Sorry. No photos, only memories.
Same here. Thanks for sharing those memories!
I loved Toytown on Valley Blvd. I bought all my daughters toys there. I remember xmas of 1980 I bought my daughter a Clippy Clop large riding horse that made sounds.Those horses on springs. ALSO in the early 90s I was in search of the 1970s Barbie A frame house the big one.The owner told me he had a few in the back of the store old store stock. I became very excited considering they weren’t around anylonger in reg.stores. He charged my $200.00 but I didn’t Care I had an original 1970s Barbie house new .
Yes that Toy store had the best memories. The owner was a really nice guy.
That’s a great story, because it confirms that Toytown had a habit of hanging onto things that didn’t sell knowing that they still had value. Most store owners get apoplectic when something hangs around taking up shelf space and will do anything to move it; thankfully Toytown didn’t, which is why I found a huge stash of out-of-production Matchbox cars that were collector’s items by 1977! Your story is similar; a fond look back at American life before “throwaway culture” became the norm. Thanks for the comment!
I have been searching for years on a good picture of Toytown, specially the interior. I went there mainly in the 1980,s when the He-Man toys were big. I can remember how excited I would get to see all the new arrivals for the He-Man collection and also I just loved walking the store and seeing all the great toys. My brother was into the Tyco slot cars so we would walk towards the back where they had an amazing display of them. Sometimes I get Soo aggravated because I just want to see it again but I guess it’s just gone.