Nice Memories

Zayre... not there's a store I haven't heard of in a loooooong time.  Talk about a trip to the past big time. back in the late 70's there was a department store called Stars near my grandparent's house. One day there was a fire there and soon it reopened and called it Tars because the letter "S" in Stars was badly burned. So it was "Tars" for awhile before the company finally folded.

The building is still standing to this day and now a fitness center and a couple other businesses as well. Times sure has changed.

Fond memories indeed. I remember models being sold at drug stores, the market, Woolworth's, Lionel Play World, Toys R Us and small mom and pop shops catering to home goods in general. I remember one of these stores in particular in Miami where my older brother bought for me the Aurora U-505. I had it till about 8-9 years ago when it got busted up in a move.

I remember one store in particular named Masters, later bought out by Zayre. It had TONS of models and remember seeing the release of America's Fighting Man, GI Joe at this store for Christmas 1964.

I'm pretty fortunate to Avenel Hobbies in Colonia NJ,which looks pretty much like this.But old time model shops are really far and few in between.

Don't forget the mom and pop convenience stores that had those tall rotating wire racks near the register that always had a few kits, comics, and cheap plastic Japanese (not Chinese) toys.

Kmart, Woolsworth, TG&Y, Skaggs (now Albertsons) and Gibsons (a regional Kmart-like store) would all have at least both sides of an isle full of models and supplies. I always wondered what it would be like to buy a can of Testors or Pactra spray paint! They generally cost more than a kit. Kids could actually but spray paint and model glue in those days without providing an ID

We had a local hobby shop that was on the other side of town from where we lived. About 3-4 times a year my mom would shop a sale at the Piggly Wiggly in the same strip mall as the hobby shop. 25-30 minutes was never enough time to see all the models and other cool stuff the hobby shop carried. There would be heck to pay if I wasn't at the car ready to leave when the grocery shopping was done.

That hobby shop is actually still there! About 1/4 of it is RC cars and planes. The other 3/4 looks like stock still there from when I was a kid. Unfortunately none of it is model related. Mostly old, faded, yellowed, dusty, dried up arts/craft type stuff. I'm assuming the owners are holding on to it for nostalgic reasons as I don't see anyone in their right mind buying what is basicly junk. Of course there is that old "trash-treasure" thing! Their main business now appears to be RC related.

As a child, I would accompany my mother and grandmother northwest to nearby (30 miles) Temple, Texas.  There, downtown, they would shop at a dress shop called "Virgina Dare" (a franchise named for the first English child born in the New World, at Raleigh's Lost Colony of Roanoke).  Across the street was a Woolworth's department store, replete with a long dining counter, a pet department filled with singing parakeets and best of all, lot's of plastic models.  I would wile away the time while they shopped for dresses.  And more often than not, take a kit home and examine it in the back seat of the family Olds or Pontiac on the trip back to Cameron.  Ah yes, the halcyon days of youth...

Gary

There is a hobby shop here in San Pedro that carries old stock stuff like that. I swear he must hit every estate sale, swap meet and garage sale within a 100 mile radius to get some of those kits.  Stepping into the shop can be a trip back in time. Unfortunately he is charging 21st century prices for them... But yes, I have pleasant memories of aisles like that in every department store or toy store when I was a boy like the one in the photo. And then to finally to go to a real honest to goodness hobby shop later on where some serious built models were on display in the cases... WOW!

The "local" (70 miles away) hobby store doesn't even stock kits in that quantity any more.

I would buy mine at Woolworth's and W.T. Grant; even Coast-to-Coast Hardware and Walgreen's had a model section.

Yup, good memories.  Thanks for the photo, Tojo.

Great photo. Thanks for sharing. Wow that kid could be be me at schaffers hobby shop in south saint Louis about fifty years ago

Fond memories indeed. My fond memories is buying model kits in department stores like Kmart when car kits were $5 each. They sold mostly Monogram, Revell, mpc, and amt/ertl brands. Another local toy store called New Hartford Toy and Hobby that I absolutely love going to during the 70's where that store carried a little more variety of kit brands then, I remember my grandparents/parents used to buy those Brittanica/Corgi animals figures, soldier figurines and die cast cars too. Man, I'd love to go back in time just to experience that feeling again.