Christmas Is for Children, and Toy Stores : Holidays: Once again fad toys lead in sales as the shopping days dwindle and the rush to buy gifts for youngsters becomes hectic.
Clerk Mary Cruz had no idea what the parents were trying to tell her. They knew what they wanted for their preschool child, but neither they nor the girl could begin to describe it. At the moment when everyone was ready to scream, the father had a brilliant idea.
With Cruz at rapt attention, the daughter sang the jingle that advertises the toy she couldn’t live without. Point made, the family walked out happy with “My Little Pony.”
Strange? Different? Naw. Cruz said it’s all in a day’s work at Toys R Us.
The chain may be to toys what Alice’s Restaurant was to food--”You can get anything you want . . . “
Cruz works at the branch on Grossmont Boulevard in La Mesa, which the company’s New Jersey headquarters says is the busiest of five in San Diego County.
This time of year, it’s wild.
Judging by the lines in La Mesa on Monday morning, it’s hard to dispute the popularity of Toys R Us or the mayhem the holidays inspire in the television age. From guitars to gliders to phonographs to fire trucks to hot wheels to trains to skateboards to rockets, row after row was packed.
Was Bruce Springsteen appearing here? Were Super Bowl tickets available? The place was alive with sound.
Maureen Richards, the store’s director, said the last quarter of the year is easily the most frenetic at any Toys R Us outlet. She more than quadruples her work force, staffing 165 workers during the Christmas season. The store is open from 8 a.m. to midnight six days a week and from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays, and rarely, she said, does the crowd slacken.
This time of year, Richards said, it’s not unusual for a buyer to fork over $2,000 at the checkout line. Just the other night, she said, Padres’ owner Joan Kroc spent $1,500 at the Toys R Us on Morena Boulevard near Mission Bay.
In nine years of supervising the annual madness, Richards said, she has learned that Americans follow trends with a passion bordering on obsession and that, if anything, the compulsions are getting more, not less, intense. She said it’s not uncommon for a mob of people to all but dive into a box of just-opened Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--this year’s most salable item--especially if the characters are the hard-to-get Michelangelo and Raphael.
Richards said the Christmas craze poses other problems for the work crew, which by the end of the holidays is as war-weary as soldiers after a grim offensive.
Recently, a shopping cart full of toys was left in one of the aisles unattended for more than an hour. She and her staff decided to “re-shop” the merchandise, putting every item back in its proper place.
The moment they finished, the woman returned and demanded to know--angrily--where her merchandise had gone. It’s happened more than once, Richards said.
Toys R Us lures both sexes and all ethnic groups and ages. It pulls in regulars from miles away.
Jeane Seeman, who drives in from Pine Valley each year, was met Monday with a seasonal frustration, felt even more acutely by the out-of-town patron: They were out of Rad Racer, a Nintendo video game. Like many of those wandering the warehouse-like building, Seeman said she opts for the mayhem of Toys R Us for one intractable reason:
Variety.
Lynne McCarthy, a Santee elementary school teacher, said she goes to Toys R Us mainly because it has become to toys what Coca-Cola is to soft drinks.
“You think of toys, you think of Toys R Us,” McCarthy said. “It’s as simple as that. I certainly don’t come here for low prices.”
McCarthy said the store “can be extremely expensive. They say they try to be competitive, and maybe they are, but they’re also manipulative. They tend to stack the higher-priced items up front, where the little ones are apt to go crazy and the parents are powerless. At least, it seems that way. That’s where the kid starts screaming, ‘I want it! I want it!’ . . . and where the parent caves in.”
Julie and Randy Stickles say Toys R Us is enough of a pull for them to drive in from El Centro each year. Toys R Us has outlets in La Mesa and Phoenix, but nothing in between, Julie Stickles said.
For their boys, ages 3 and 7, they were buying a soccer set, a golf set, a toy service station and a fake gun.
More than a few people were buying the so-called “war toys,” including a fake Uzi submachine gun.
“People love those,” Richards said. “The Uzi water pistols are especially popular. And people love the full line of G.I. Joe guns.”
The volume and detail of the toys, piled 30 feet high from floor to ceiling, get a bit dizzying at times. But the worst feeling of all, according to one mother, is how much it costs and wondering if it’s really worth it.
Diane Hoy, who lives in Rancho San Diego, was loading her cart with a life-sized doll, a Smart Start Speller and Lite Brite, for making your own pictures.
She shook her head.
“My kids will play with these for about a day,” she said. “So, I don’t really know why I do it. They see this stuff on television, and they want it, and I love them, so I get it for them. I just want to make them happy.
“But then it’s gone. . . . And there’s all of these people who have nothing to eat. But come next year, I’ll be back here again, buying toys.”
