Two Ages of Toys, One Eternal Childhood.

Traditional.

Wooden frames and pearly panes with a delicate dusting of frost and beyond, dolls adorned in candy pink atop sturdy houses four stories high. Look inside, it’s all real.

A convivial kettle in command of a copper rich kitchen peppered with pots, pans and plates.  Walls playing host to princely portraits.  A study of silver trinkets,  chandeliers and velvet comforts. The bedrooms and nursery lined with lithe lamplight and tots guarding toys as tangible as those sought by giants roaming the wide outer world.

Tiny grown-ups on every chair, one a slumber upstairs, fostered by four posts of lavish mahogany and luxurious linens anointed with lavender. Mummy? Couldn’t we live here, forever?  Quick! Stop!  If we did that, we’d miss the rest of the shop.

Here, a golden bronze and brown bear forest.  Plush pigs.  Miniature merry-go-rounds chiming charming melodies. Whirling tops whistling for encores.   Hand painted Yo Yos, drums and Diablos. Man moulded marionettes marching to Gounod. Board based fantasies. Jigsaw wonderlands.

Chattanooga Choo Choo trains and china tea sets.  That crimson fire engine. No!  I’ll take the clipper with its sails to perfect scale and sewn on a singer, those rainbow bricks of alphabetic aplomb and that regal rosewood rocking horse for Robert, my youngest, too small to saddle a stallion. Ah! What dreams may come.

Modern.

Silent sentinels of gliding glass lead to luminous aisles brimming with boundless brands.  Brigades of Buzz Light year, batteries included. Disney dissonance, or nourishing novelty? Boys here. Girls there. Seas of pink, oceans of blue.  This year’s must have, next years old hat.  Yet My Little Pony and Barbie still thrive. Round the corner, the next corridor and another Disney dynasty.

Hark the helicopters and duck those drones.  Head for towers of Transformers in a Star Wars metropolis.  Let’s open one. I can’t reach Optimus Prime, so grab Vader, or maybe Megatron.  Flip the top and relish that factory-fresh fragrance of styrene sweetness.  Clutch his arms with perspiring palms, pick-up and hold, the heavier the pricier and Taylor wants both.

No, that talking teddy, the one in the news.  Mint stock due this dawn, that’s why we’ve camped out, just join the queue.  But behold yonder Batman battalion, and here, a wall of Wolverines.  Its a maelstrom of Marvel against a deluge of DC.

Look, that remarkable Robot, great for post Turkey trivia.  I’m confused. Mum, where’s Dad?  He’s in his own section sending me hints.  Shall X mark the box or PS 4 more?  At last, decision made, but where to pay, when every sign insists we stay.