Rough, Rugged & Ready for Action at Woolco
Woolco, Venture, TG&Y and Dolgins were department stores that I remember from my youth, and we’ll never see the likes of them again. But the ads of days gone by linger on. Check out this selection of early Real American Hero era Joes from a Woolco circular. I’ll take them all, and throw in the Bigfoot trucks, too! By the way, that’s most likely real flame next to the Cobra ASP. Now there’s a first in 80s catalog dio shots!
I don’t usually associate Milton Bradley with anything other than games.
And speaking of department stores, I remember when Sears had a toy section all year round. And not crappy toys like the grocery store, either. I’m talking name brand action figure lines like Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, ect. They’re basically a hardware store in the mall these days.
My dad was a Sears junkie. In the local store, the toys were right next to the hardware. I have tons of memories of staring at everything in the toy aisles while he looked at tools. The reason I got the Sears exclusives was because I was there so often that I saw them and my Dad liked to buy stuff at Sears so he got them for me at Christmas. It was a different time. The Sears Hardware dept at that store is still in the same spot with the same door. When I see it, it always reminds of their toy aisles.
In my area, we didn’t have most of these stores. We had Air Way (which became Target in the early ’80’s) ans Zayre. Other than that, you had the various department stores at the mall. We were lucky in that there was a Children’s Palace near the mall. Toys R Us them opened a store right next door. CP didn’t last long after that. But, for a couple of years in the mid 1980’s, if I didn’t fine what I wanted at one store, I could walk over the other to see if they had it.
Even hardware stores had toy departments back then! Toys were everywhere and great. Now good toys are understocked and most retailers suck.
”Everything looks interesting,including the assorted G.I.Joe merchandise displayed.” ”Department stores that anyone can remember, are a thing of the past, just like shopping malls.”
Nice W.H.A.L.E. prototype.
I had that black Bigfoot truck! I’d completely forgotten about it