It didn’t matter if you were surrounded by strangers, every child would be glued by the latest games, and the excitement of playing a new console.Īnd when you weren’t dragging your fingers down the new release section, making hell for whatever poor staffer had to clean up after the hordes, you could wander the nearby entertainment aisles examining new Digimon digivices, or searching for Delta Goodrem’s Innocent Eyes on the music charts. Even if you weren’t playing for yourself, you could watch – and kids often did, crowded around the tiny Toys ‘R’ Us monitor watching Crash Bandicoot 2 with wide-open eyes. Sure, that often meant older, rougher boys would often move you on – but being forced to surrender the controller never felt like an impost.
It was a digital playground where anything went – and it was often teeming with kids, all vying for a spot on the controller. The walls were lined with new releases, and playable PlayStation and Nintendo consoles gave tasters of the latest experiences. This segment of the store was dedicated solely to video games, CDs, videos, and Tamagotchis. In the entertainment section of Toys ‘R’ Us, Moore Park in Sydney – that could almost be a reality. You could browse aisles filled the games, and with no concept of value for money, imagine a future where every toy and game on the shelf was yours. As a child, a trip to the shops was glorious for its potential. That’s about where their understanding stops. Money is used to buy toys, clothes, and other fun goods. To kids, money is no object – rather, they have no idea it exists, or the burden of how it functions. Australian pop star Delta Goodrem in Toys ‘R’ Us Moore Park, date unknown. While it no longer exists, the memories of walking down stuffed aisles and visiting its cube-like entertainment section remain vivid.
The Toys ‘R’ Us in Moore Park, Sydney was a magical escape for kids of my era. Toys ‘R’ Us went one step further, creating a mecca for young kids intrigued by the worlds of gaming and pop culture.
While your parents roamed the aisles looking at the latest video camera, or a replacement set of drawers, you could jump into missions searching for the wily Carmen, or save the zoo with Putt-Putt. A trip to a homemaker’s centre that might have been boring was suddenly a big and marvellous adventure. Having easily accessible PCs in shopping centres transformed the entire experience of even going to the shops growing up. If you got lucky, a parent might have had a home computer for work but even then, you might have been banned from playing games on it. The original PlayStation, for example, entered the market in Australia at AU $699.95 – nearly double the cost of modern consoles, based on inflation.
GIANT JENGA GAME TOYS R US PC
Not only was it a clever marketing ploy – kids who enjoyed these games would go on to badger parents to purchase the games, or a new computer – it also allowed many to experience PC or console gaming for the first time.Ĭomputers and consoles were expensive in the 1990s and early 2000s. While that’s looking at the shops with rose-tinted nostalgia, it’s hard to deny the early 2000s were influenced by the shiny new concept of ‘experiential’ retail.īuoyed by the idea that the shops could be fun, Australian stores like Toys ‘R’ Us, Harvey Norman and Gateway opened their doors to hordes of children in this era, providing unique and memorable experiences to every young and impressionable visitor.īoth Gateway and Harvey Norman allowed kids to hop onto then-modern PCs, running programs like Kid Pix, Putt-Putt, Spy Fox and Carmen Sandiego to teach about the wonders of gaming, and the benefits of edutainment. Before shopping centres devolved into capitalist wastelands packed with bustling feet and shoppers set on smash-and-grab missions, they were more experimental, magical places – realms where kids could roam, play the latest games, sit down with an old PC, or jump into a playground ball pit.
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