Saturday, July 10, 2010

Store Interiors, January 1966

I have a few vintage photos showing the interiors of some Disneyland shops. Rare, but not terribly exciting...! The slides are stamped "January 1966", but judging by the crowds in the first picture, the photos may have been taken just before Christmas. It's like a feeding frenzy, if you accidentally cut your thumb, the other shoppers would smell blood and devour you in seconds. I've seen it happen!

Any guesses as to which store this is? I was originally going to surmise that it was a Main Street shop, but the folk-art details at the end make me think that it might be somewhere in Fantasyland.

Lady, just put down the doll and walk away. Don't buy that big stuffed dog either. Go buy something cool, like a Nautilus toy or a Rocket to the Moon model. Just avoid stuffed animals in general; that's one of my rules. If you're shopping for a girl, get her a Tinker Bell toy, something that really says "Disneyland". Of course cash is always good too.

10 comments:

Deja vu said...

It's the Tinker Bell Toy Shop in FantasyLand.

Check out this great blog:

http://gorillasdontblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/tinker-bell-toy-shop-october-1969.html

You can see the distinctive decorated frame in the interior that you kindly lightened up for us to keep in mind in case you posted more photos of it in the future.

Another dead giveaway is the fact that the shop is filled with toys.

TokyoMagic! said...

My guess is the Tinkerbell Toy shop in Fantasyland. All clown dolls are creepy! Look at that one that's out of focus in the second pic. I'll be having nightmares about him tonight!

TokyoMagic! said...

Oops, "Deja vu" beat me to it by one minute!

Nightmares, I tell you!

Deja vu all over again said...

^
Doesn't make you less right.

The clowns are creepy, but all the stuff on the high shelf in the first slide looks like absolute horror movie mayhem, and there's even a gun up there.

Pleasant, dreams?

Connie Moreno said...

You mean to tell me that once upon a time they sold un-Disney toys???? Ditto on the clown - UBER creepy!

Rich T. said...

The best thing my parents ever bought me at Tinkerbell Toy Shop--and it might have been '66--was a put-it-together tin roller coaster that made a loud, obnoxious grating sound when the wind-up cars racheted themselves up the lift hill. When I woke at 5:00 AM the next morning in the motel--with the rest of the family sound asleep--I *tried* to play quietly with it...1966 Epic Fail!

Major, this web site continually brings back good memories. Thank you!

Major Pepperidge said...

Thanks for the info, Deja Vu and TokyoMagic! I'd totally forgotten that older photo, d'oh.

The clown reminds me of the one in the TV movie for Stephen King's "IT".

Rich T, thanks for your fun recollections!

Nancy said...

reminds me of the clown doll in Poltergeist....

do not like clown much i have to admit, but the toy shop looks so nice with all the lights on. thanks for the rare photos

Chuck said...

In the back left of the first photo, you can just see the doorway that led to the entrance to the apartment built for Walt's grandkids' on the second floor...

Eric Scales said...

Was there really an apartment up there? I worked on the Fantasyland stock crew for a while and that door led up to a stock room, but I don't remember any of that second level being anywhere near finished enough to serve as a bedroom. Perhaps it was intended to be finished but never was? Or I could just totally be forgetting some section of it that I wasn't able to see.