Nostalgia Week
Nostalgia Week | Toys “Were” Us
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Just last week, Toys “R” Us announced that it would be closing its U.S. stores, and I genuinely felt sad about this — sadder than I did when my parents told ten-year-old me we would no longer be going to Blockbuster on Saturdays for our weekend movie nights (until a year and a half ago, I actually kept a Blockbuster membership card in my wallet). Perhaps this especially wistful reaction is due to the fact that not three blocks from my paternal grandparents’ house is a shopping plaza, at which there used to be a Toys “R” Us location. Whenever my parents would drop my younger brother and me off at our grandparents’ place, we’d frequently ask our grandma to bring us to Toys “R” Us. We didn’t always go there with the intention of getting our grandma to buy us something — sometimes, just bringing home the catalogue to pore over was enough for us. However, there were times when we’d stay in the store for hours as we figured out how to use different toys, and despite her best efforts, our grandma would occasionally lose track of us.