Flashbacks and memories

Hi there readers.

I know I had mentioned in my last post that I was going to talk about Amber Diceless this week. But while I was running around with my wife yesterday we passed by the now closed Toys R Us location in Southcenter (Tukwilla)WA. And just driving past, seeing the closed sign on the doors and being able to see a whole lot of… nothing… inside the store took me back down memory lane and I wanted to share.

The image that tops this post is from their original location and was part of an article in one of the local news papers.

The flash that hit me was not all the toys that I had picked up there over the decades of knowing the chain of stores. But that Toys R Us what what gave me the chance to get into gaming fully.

1979 – 81 my family lived … well a fair ways away from the Seattle area. But being back here to visit family we went to Toys R Us… I don’t remember why… but we went. Wandering through the store I went into their books section, yeah for those who only know the more modern Toys R Us in the Seattle area… they used to have really big books and media sections all dedicated to titles for the young at heart, and I had been Jones-ing for a new Hardy Boys or something else by CS Lewis or a follow up to Charlotte’s Web. But I saw a small section with D&D books and games in it. I could not believe my luck. I had wanted more of the D&D stuff since I had played my Kryptonian Dwarf and here it was… in a place that was so cool that it had toys, and books, and now D&D too!!!

And low and behold I found myself in possession of the first Basic Rules set. This pic does it no justice as mine had three hole punches in it so it could be put in a binder… oh damn so easy to carry… And dice that I had to take a crayon to so that the numbers would stand out… and it even came with an adventure module. So COOL! Next holiday I was teaching some of my cousins how to play. We really did not get all that deep into the rules. Made up a lot of crap as we went. But for me at least it was a lot of fun. I hope they enjoyed it as much. But that also got me back to Toys R Us and this time I found another box… even cooler than the first…

And the rule book was also three hole punched… and now I had a binder so I asked my dad to three hole punch both of the adventure modules with some of his industrial tools at work. AND EVEN MORE DICE!!! Now my cousins and I could take things even further… and this adventure had DINOSAURS!!! even cooler than Dragons at the time… but not by much.

I cannot remember which one of these two it was, or if it was both… but I know that I did not have enough money for at least one of them, and offered to do more chores and work around the house to get an advance on my allowance (25 cents per week) sufficient enough to buy them. Yeah that’s right I went into debt and took on extra work just to get these.

Then more followed…

Now there was an ADVANCED version… I no longer had to have an elf who did elf things!!! I could be an elf who was a thief or a priest… or what the hell is a half elf? And why is there no half dwarf? Of half halfling… ahhh hell I can figure out how to make those myself…

And all that came from a little kid wandering into Toys R Us and choosing game books over regular books, or action figures, or other toys or balls or Hot Wheels or anything else really.

In 1982 when we were moved back into the Seattle area I found out about Walden Books and B Dalton and sure they had a few little shelves for RPG books. Eventually they became my go too source for them before I found a local book store that had even more… oh so many more… But for as long as the local Toys R Us had a books section they were the place I wanted to hit first to see if I could find anything to feed the gaming hunger.

They have not stocked things like that locally for a long… long time. I cannot speak to any other part of the US or the world where they operated, or in some cases still might… not really sure how all the international business stuff works for something like this… but once upon a time they did. And things have not been so epic since.

And now with the stores passing… with the end of that era… the memories kick up and I get that sad feeling that I will never see its like again.

Ok so flashback shared… memories passed… and so we can move on.

Thanks for understanding the need to remember something publicly and I will get that Amber posting up soon.

Now gimme the dice… I gotta scrape the paint off the numbers and find a crayon….