CELEBRATIONS are planned for when a much loved toy shop reopens in York.
Toys 'R' Us will return to the city at the WHSmith store in Monks Cross Shopping Park next Saturday, June 10 - five years after its last city store closed in Clifton Moor in 2018.
A lifesize Geoffrey the Giraffe sculpture will also feature in the new Toys 'R' Us shop, and a Sylvanian Families character will be making an appearance at the grand opening too.
News that the popular toy store is having a comeback sent us straight into our archives to look at the many times Toys 'R' Us made the headlines.
Often it was when a much-in-demand toy or toys linked to a popular craze were coming into stock and customers would queue outside for hours to get their hands on them.
Were you one of them?
Some of our photos take us back more than 25 years to 1997 when Tamagotchi pets were all the rage.
Any child of the 90s will have loved their Tamagotchis. Originating in Japan, the handheld digital pet quickly becoming one of the biggest toy fads of the late 1990s and the early 2000s. As of March 2021, over 83 million units have been sold worldwide.
Our photos from 1997 show a queue of adults and children outside Toys 'R' Us at Clifton Moor for a chance to buy the Tamagotchi pets. Another photo shows happy customer Sharon Slater from Strensall who was one of the first to buy the Japanese computer pet from the Clifton Moor store.
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What are your memories of favourite childhood toys - and York toy shops? Join in the chat in our nostalgia group on Facebook, Why We Love York - Memories.
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Another toy fad at the time was for Teletubbies, made popular by the children's TV show.
In November 1997, we pictured people queueing to get their hands on Teletubbies toys.
Fast forward one year and the must-have toy was Furby. Made in America, Furby was a cuddly electronic toy which looked like a cross between a hamster and an owl, with big wide eyes. It spoke its own nonsense language but slowly would start to speak English. More than 40 million of them were sold during the three years of its original production.
Our photo up at Clifton Moor Toys 'R' Us just before Christmas 1998 shows happy customers who managed to buy a Furby, but unfortunate teenager Mark Whitaker who missed out.
By 1999, Star Wars mania had taken over the toy universe, and again fans were queuing at Toys 'R' Us for must-have merch.
Our archive photo shows Star Wars fans Melanie Bradley, Joe Etheridge, Becky Vardy and Lee Moran leaving Toys R Us with a trolley full of goodies.
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