Play Co Toys

If you ask anyone from the 80s about their favorite toy store, you’re more than likely to hear the answer: Toys “R” Us or maybe KB Toys. While I have plenty of memories of going to both through my teens and beyond, the place for me to check out the latest action figures as a young kid was Play Co.

Play Co Toys was a chain of smaller toy stores with multiple locations in the San Diego area, and one of them was right down the street from my childhood home. I think my parents liked letting my two brothers and me loose in the smaller store where they could always see us and not the giant warehouses of Toys “R” Us we could get lost in. Though the stores weren’t nearly the size of those, they were packed to the gills with as many action figures, play sets, and video games as you could ask for.

Most of my memories there are of Transformers, since that was all I seemed to care about. Play Co was the only store I ever saw that had Transformers trading cards, a collection that I still own, although I never completed the set. I remember seeing tabletops with toys on display for the kids to marvel over, without a glass case in sight so we could try them out ourselves. One time I remember seeing Omega Supreme in all its battery-operated glory, the tank running its course around the missile tower. You’d better believe I tried transforming it, without a single employee telling me not to touch it. One year, after much begging and whining, I convinced my parents to lie down the thirty bucks to buy Scorponok, only to find out the store was out of stock. I still have no idea why I didn’t just ask them to take me to one of the other locations – there were eleven more within a few miles.

Not all my memories there included Transformers, though. My brother, not obsessed with a single toyline like I was, spent his money on He-Man figures and Mad Scientist Monster Flesh sets, one of which I remember him opening up in the car and playing with on the way home. Man, that stuff felt weird! I also remember getting a lot of back-to-school stuff like the lunch boxes that I wish I still had.

Play Co had bigger events sometimes, I remember, attracting hobbyist adults and kids alike. They routinely had enormous tables set up for slot car races out in the parking lot. Other days, they had RC car races in the lot and down the alley next to the store. While I never took part, everyone there was happy to show off their cars, surrounded by kids fully engrossed in them.

I moved out of the area around 1988, but I was determined recently to find the store from my youth. Unfortunately, I found out the company filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and closed all their Play Co locations and 23 other stores under different names. When asking my mom which toy store we went to most often, she could only remember Toys “R” Us. I found an ad that listed all the stores in the San Diego and looked up each one, trying to determine the closest to my childhood home, and one was just a mile or so from my old address! The spot looks familiar on Google Earth, but of course, now it’s a car dealership.

Even though I no longer live in the area, I was disappointed to find out the chain shuttered over twenty years ago. KB Toys only lasted a few more years longer before they also went out of business, and of course, Toys “R” Us closed its doors a few years ago. Since then, Geoffrey has started coming back, and I only wish Play Co could make a similar return some day.

Besides being an avid toy collector and cartoon enthusiast, I’m an author of retro-inspired novels. Old School Evil celebrates the cartoons of the 80s and their over-the-top villains - Megatron, Miles Mayhem, Skeletor, and the others that used to hold our weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings hostage. Check out my books Old School Evil and Old School Evil: The Rejects on Amazon, or go to my site www.oldschoolevil.com.