Another (past) good thing

 Sometimes I will randomly think about stores I used to go to in my (long) past - the town I grew up in had a gift shop (which also carried what passed for "penny" candy in the high-inflation 70s, and also had some small stuffed toys) called The Attic. It was originally in a small reddish detached building (I just remember it wasn't right on the main street). Later on it moved to another building, a less distinctive one, on the main street. I'm pretty sure it closed before I was in college. 

I bought a few small stuffed toys from them; I remember they also sold the "SS Happiness" series (which I dearly wanted, and eventually did get the bear-captain, but they were much more expensive than the small ones I bought).  There's not a LOT online (other than eBay listings for the old toys or books) but here's a photo of the cover for a pattern for Joshua, the bear captain from what used to be called the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum.

I think Determined Productions was the company that manufactured the toys you could buy. (There was also, as I remember, an elephant, a black cat, a white rabbit....the elephant was the social director, and the rabbit was a sports director? The cat was a passenger and there may also have been a ship's doctor and a chef?)

 And The Attic also sold little magnets of (mostly) animals, made by a company called Peaceable Kingdom. They were composed of little pom poms, like the kind on ball fringe. I had a lot of these as a kid and used to play with them like my other little animal toys. (Again, this is a thing there's almost nothing archived online about, despite them having been a scant 45-50 years ago) For as long as the link stays valid, here's someone on Etsy selling a lot of these. 

Another shop that I KNOW is gone (I read its "obituary" online some years ago) was The Land of Make Believe. Again, like The Attic, this was largely a gift shop. I remember them most as the place that sold Smurfs and they also had Mrs. Grossman's stickers for sale, where you could cut or tear as many as you wanted to buy off the roll, and I remember the rolls being held on a big plexiglas stand. 

they also had stuffed toys; some of the toys I bought came from there. I guess they also sold games, mostly fantasy RPGs but I wasn't into that so I remember them best for the Smurfs (and other little figural toys) and the stickers.

And you know? I miss places like that. There are none in my town and not really any near me - yes, they are kind of frivolous, and probably have to be in an area where there's more disposable income. And maybe now the wal-marts and similar of the world have taken over as the place where toys are bought? 

But more than missing the existence of places like that, I miss the person I was then, where I could walk into a store like that with a couple week's allowance in my pocket, and buy a small toy or some stickers, and be happy for days after about that. (Everyone wants a rock to wind a piece of string around)