Toys “R” Us Christmas Dream Book 1986

What’s up, dudes? It’s the greatest store ever to an ‘80s kid! Yes, it’s Toys “R” Us, the category killer! Today we’re talking the Toys “R” Us Christmas Dream Book 1986!

Toys “R” Us goes all the way back to 1948, when Charles Lazarus opened a little Washington, D.C. shop called Children’s Bargain Town, selling baby furniture. Eventually he pivoted from cribs and strollers to playthings. In 1957, Lazarus opened the first store under the Toys “R” Us name, built like a supermarket for toys—long aisles, stacked shelves, self-service shopping, and wall-to-wall kids’ stuff. 

This book provides a huge variety of toys. From ThunderCats to Cabbage Patch Kids, there’s something for everyone. The Milton Bradley games provided hours of fun, and Cats Lair gave the ThunderCats a base and place of respite in between fighting mutants and berserkers. Of course, Robotech 3 3/4in figures were great to incorporate on your Joe team!

Electronic Battleship? Check. Lazer Tag? Rad! The Hart Family? Only if it's a surprise party playset! So grab your ThunderCats figures, throw them in your Sling ‘Em Fling ‘Em Wrestling Ring, and circle your favorites in this  Toys “R” Us Christmas Dream Book 1986!

Check us out on Facebook, Twitter,  Instagram,  Totally Rad Christmas Mall & Arcade, Teepublic.com, or TotallyRadChristmas.com!  Later, dudes!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the world's biggest Toy Store where Christmas dreams and wished for things become reality. We're talking Toys R Us Christmas Dream Book 1986. It was 1986. Top Gun had everyone quoting Maverick and Goose. The real life Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy shook the world, and Toys R Us released their 1986 Dream Book. I'm your host, Jerry D with another episode of Totally Rad Christmas, the podcast that talks all things Christmas in the 80s, toys, movies, specials, music, and fads. If it was gnarly during Christmas in the 80s, we got it covered. What's up, dudes? Today we're talking the Toys R Us 1986 Dream Book. A bright pastel-bordered blast of Christmas nostalgia filled with dolls, robots, lasers, puppets, and more neon pink than an 80s skating rink.

SPEAKER_06 1:25

I don't want to grow up. I am a Toys R Us candid.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

You just said the magic words that look like you did. And look at the low prices on Holiday Bun at Toys R Us. Storytelling Big Bird from Ideal moves his eyes and beak with the words just 6799.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Now, before we dive into the dream book, let's revisit the toy titan behind it. Okay, Toys R Us began with Charles Lazarus in 1948 when he opened Children's Bargain Town, selling baby furniture. He quickly realized parents don't need two cribs, but they do buy countless toys, so he shipped it into playthings, and business exploded. By 1957, the first Toys R Us opened, designed like a grocery store. Wide aisles, shelves stacked to the ceiling, and everything self-service. Kids had never seen anything like it. Jeffrey the giraffe evolved from a 1950s ad mascot into a full-blown icon, singing that legendary, I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys R Us Kid jingle. By the mid-80s, Toys R Us wasn't just a store, it was a destination, a pilgrimage almost, a place where holiday magic lived in fluorescent lighting. And I loved every single minute of it. Of course, the Dream Book didn't exist in a vacuum. Now, retail wishbooks go back to the 1933 Sears Christmas book, which grew into the iconic Sears wishbook. Hundreds of pages thick, filled with everything from pajamas to pinball machines. Montgomery wore, JCPenney's, and others followed. Well, Toys R Us took the concept and made it compact. Shorter, punchier, holiday catalogs inserted into newspapers or magazines, focusing laser tight on toys, the stuff kids actually circled in red pen or red crayon in their dream books. Which brings us to the 1986 dream book. Pastel Pink Cover, Santa at the tree, giant gifts, and Jeffrey cheerfully cheering you on. Just completely irresistible, right? Now I gotta say, I have memories of going to Toys R Us. It was two and a half hours away in Corpus Christi, and so it was an actual destination. Anytime we went to go see one of our aunts uh or uncles, it we had to stop there because we didn't have one in the Rio Grande Valley. So this thing was just awesome. I remember seeing Castle Grey Skull there. I remember seeing uh the Thundercats Cat's layer there in the wild. I mean, uh seeing it in person was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was just fantastic. You navigated like this little maze as soon as you walked in, and once you got to the main section, there were just aisles that felt like they lasted forever. It was fantastic, right? So every trip there, of course, was an event, just like a full-day adventure. But I do recall the first time I saw Thundercats, I recall the first time I saw Bionic 6, and a bunch of other cool, cool toys there. In fact, I remember walking down the action figure aisle, just like turning that corner, and bam, there it was. And being a Thundercats kid, I wanted it bad. I didn't get it. I wish I had, but I understand. I got some other really cool things those years, so you know, beggars can't be choosers. But honestly, when I saw it, it did feel like seeing a celebrity in person. Like that's what it felt like as a kid. Like this awesome, magnificent thing that you saw in cartoons just right there in front of you. I mean, it was like the toy was looking back at me. Now I didn't own a berserker or a fist pounder, but you know, there I stood just staring, imagining Lionel rallying the Thundercats inside that tower. Well, the dream book teased it, but in person, ugh, just incredible. So we're gonna take a look page by page through this thing. So let's start with the cover. We begin with the pink bordered cover. Jeffrey dressed like Santa, peeking over the Toys R Us logo, placing gifts under a giant tree, almost like as if he's putting a star on top as well. Uh there's just gifts piled everywhere. There's a a starburst at the bottom right-hand corner that announces, you know, open till midnight, which I'm sure as a parent is a godsend, right? I mean, everybody's got full-time jobs. You just hope and pray that things are are just open. Well, there's teddy bears, there's robots, there's dolls. It's really, really awesome. And we get it's a big green sea, Christmas Dream Book '86. Awesome. Just magnificent. Now, as you turn the page, we get a little short Mattel section. And unfortunately, it doesn't have all the toys that I would have liked to have seen for Mattel, but this must be what they were pushing that year. So we had My Child Babies, the Heart family. Um, again, didn't collect it, Popples, which believe it or not, Popples did have a Christmas video game in the 80s, and we're gonna be talking about that later this year. There's some preschool games and uh things like that. So uh My Child Babies and Stroller was basically just like soft-bodied, big-eyed dolls. I guess they were like Mattel's answer to the cabbage patch kids, more like classic baby doll look to it, with brushable hair and um you know clothes that you can remove, of course. Then we have the heart family. Now, this was like Mattel's version of Barbie. So there was mom, dad, there was the baby, uh, they had plastic cribs, bassinets. It looks like there is a surprise party set here as well as the playground. So it was kind of like a mom and a dad, I guess we're Barbie and Ken. Now, moving on, we also get um the popples. These were fluffy, reversible plush animals, they're folded into their own pouches, so they kind of like like reverse gremlin, right? So when the Mogwai's first appear, they they just pop off as these little spheres of fur and then they evolve into gremlins. This is like the other way around.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Inside this soft fur ball is a neat new friend. Party and puffball popple sold separately. See?

SPEAKER_06 7:16

Pop goes the popple. Inside out base the south! Poples love to the party. You have a ton of fun! Pop goes the pople.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

When you unpop a popple, you let the fun out of the bag. Nine Pople characters, including Party and Puffball, come in different sizes and colors. Each Pople sold separately from Mattel.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

But um, they were adorable and they were loud. The other thing that I really liked on this page is the board games. So it looks like there's three there. There's one from Barbie that says um oh gosh, what does that say? Charming the World games, there's a Shira game, and then there's Masters of the Universe Snake Mountain Rescue Game. Now that sounds super cool. I would have loved to have played it. Um, I always preferred action figures to board games as a kid, but also I did love board games, so I would have loved to have played this. And of course, it's Masters of the Universe, can't go wrong. Now, across from that, we get Worlds of Wonder and Laser Tag. So there's a Talking Mother Goose. Uh I didn't have one of these. Uh my brother had Teddy Ruxpin, but you know, it's it's the same kind of concept. Books like Cinderella, Little Red Hand, Sleeping Beauty. Uh they all had, of course, synchronized audio cassettes. We got Pleasant Dreams Animals, which I have zero memory of as well. But we also had laser tag.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

From Worlds of Wonder Stadium that included.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

So this is a whole laser tag kit. I mean, this dude's all decked out. He's got the star sensor, he's got the boots, the the starlight. I mean, he's he's ready to go and uh and fight some bad guys, right? It's just super cool. He looks like a sci-fi movie, and I wanted it so bad. Next, turn the page and we get Coleco. So, of course, we have Cabbage Patch kids. They had some Premies as well. Play Pens, Wrinkles, uh, Wrinkles Puppets, I don't remember those again at all either. So, the Cabbage Patch Premies is what they're premiering now. They're like little smaller, younger-looking cabbage patch kids, they had uh softer outfits, um, like big baby energy, you know.

SPEAKER_05 9:52

An unusual thing happened recently. Some cabbage patch kids were born with beautiful corn silk hair. Look, everyone said, You can wash and curl their hair and braid it and style it lots of ways, and they have their own brush they can hold. Seems as if they can have a different hairdo almost every day. And they always love to be loved a lot. Cabbage Patch Corn Silk kids, with everything you see here, each sold separately, some accessories not included from Coleco.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Um, huge draw, of course, in '86. Everything was like being more compact, so good stuff. They also had a Cabbage Patch Young Astronaut. Man, they had everything, didn't they? Uh yeah, NASA's Young Astronauts program. It was like like space theme specifically commemorating that. Little blue jumpsuits, white helmets. I mean, it's like a like full-on time capsule here. They also had Cabbage Patch Kids Playpen and Twin Stroller. So it was foldable, it traveled well. So this thing's really awesome. I wish they made real strollers like that because some of those are hard to fold up. They also had the corn silk kids, which, again, I don't remember. These were like um they had more realistic hair, I guess. It's kind of what I'm seeing here. And they were designed for like like the hair was made to brush it, to style it, things like that. We got wrinkles hand puppets, which is like big droopy dogs. I don't know what kind of almost like pound puppies, but like with real droopy faces. And then uh a few other of those little like talking Toby, talking teacher kind of toys on this one here. Those educational toys, you gotta have them. Well, across from it, we get the Galoob section. Now, Galoob has a lot of vehicles in here, and I was never super into vehicles. I liked the Batmobile, I liked Kit from Knight Rider. That's about it. I I was never huge into like playing with trucks or cars or micro machines or you know hot wheels or anything like that. Well, these we have the Swamper vehicle, which I guess has like a springy kind of suspension, like monster truck style. We had uh 4x4s, there's like this uh the giant command 32, which is like a battery-powered crawler, which that's actually kind of cool, and then there was like a baby talk doll and a smarty bear. So I guess the doll spoke like 16 different phrases depending on how you positioned her. Uh the smarty bear was like the world's this is how it was marketed. Check this out. World's first IQ bear. So it responded to kids' questions with clever answers via internal voice electronics. So it's almost kind of like smart toys if you think about it. It's kind of neat, but I don't remember this guy at all. Just like he doesn't even look remotely familiar. And of course we get Jeffrey in the bottom right corner wrapping some presents and dreaming about monster trucks. Now, as you turn the page, we get the Milton Bradley section. Milton Bradley, again, huge, huge with board games, awesome. We have Battleship, Othello, Power Barons, which I don't remember. Gem Fashion uh Ooh, what is that? Gem Fashion Flash? Okay, I don't remember that either. Uh Fortress America. I mean, there was this was like peak Milton Bradley, right? I mean, they it just it's all here. We have Electronic Battleship, which I gotta say was one of my favorites because it actually talked and made noises and was super cool. We also got Simon, that that tabletop like saucer kind of game. And we have a handheld version of it as well. The Pocket Simon. Great games on this page, really. Life, I mean, life's a classic. And Jeffrey, just the Santa, he's got that he's holding like a little pocket one. I mean, good for him. He's gonna have some fun there. But on the next page, we get Matchbox, and I like this page because there is Robotech figures on this.

SPEAKER_06 13:35

The battle pods are coming, so you better beware. Three Kaiana's battle pods are everywhere. But Rick Hunter and the Baratech are on their way! If you can get there fast enough, you'll save the day. But I'll be back.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Now I remember seeing Robotech for the first time in service merchandise. The little figures were cool, they were G.I. Joe sized, they they had all the different like they could bend their knees, so they had all the articulation the G.I. Joe did. They just look super cool. I mean, we got Rick Hunter here, we have the Veritech like fighters, Veritech hover tanks. I mean, it's just uh we have the Nvid shock troopers and and battle pods. I mean, these things are super cool. I never had any vehicles, but I for sure had several of these toys, and I played with them all the time with my G.I. Joe's. Like, you just combine them because they look just like it, they were almost like just slightly lesser quality plastic than G.I. Joe's, you know. But yeah, I mean, Robotech were just so cool. Three and three quarters inch, just like G.I. Joe, and it's basically Robotech Macross stuff. So we also have uh Max Sterling here, some uh Zentradi Warriors. Um, yeah, great, like just fun, great things here. Alright, as we turn the page, we're almost done. That's how short these books are, right? Just real punchy. We get Viewmaster. This is like Viewmaster and Parker Brothers, each has half a page here. So the Viewmaster page, of course, everybody remembers them. It's those uh like binocular-looking things, but you put the little Viewmaster set in it, and then you just press the lever and it goes. And so this one has a showbeam projector, it's got Sesame Street jam. Ooh, the Centurions, the Centurions were cool. Like, talk about underrated toy, nobody remembers them. There was even a cartoon that again nobody remembers. A showbeam projector, so that's like a kid-friendly flashlight projector with slide wheels, almost like your own little mini movie projector. We also have, of course, by um Parker Brothers, a lot of little kids' toys here. So Nerfles, I guess. It's like this this round town or village, something like that.

SPEAKER_08 15:59

Ever see a bullet light like this? Nerfles off it's a bob speeding scrapy and scratchy. The Nerfles, you look the nerfful office of bob speeding, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:27

There's these little round figures, they have snap-on parts. Now this set had houses, police stations, there were little pets, there's also a camper, and some figures. Um, I don't remember Nerfles, but oh, actually, I do remember Nerfles. Looking at him, I do remember this now. Because uh I liked this one dude that looked like he had a mask on and he looked like he was a criminal or a robber or something, and um there were some cops, so I just they were super cool. I wow, talk about like core memory unlocked, right? Well, as we turn the page, we get LJN, and I gotta say, LJN is no Hasbro, they're no Mattel, but they had some cool figures as well, and in this case, they had Thundercats, they had some wrestling figures like WWF, and they had photons, so it's a fire, it's fire, fire, it's fire, it's a cry, it's a cry. Thundercats, we see the Thunder Tank, um, we get Mumra and Lionel, there's some Berserkers in there, the the mutant fist pounder, I never had that either. But the Thunder Tank was super cool. I remember my best friend had it, and we would just like play, and of course, like the Thundercats were huge, right? They were like six-inch figures or something, and so like they felt massive in your hands, and they just looked awesome. But right next to that, we get Jeffree behind the cat's lair, and uh I mean it's $49.97, so $50 for this cat's lair, ages four and up. I mean, it's that's awesome. But $50 is a lot, especially uh in the 80s, so I can understand why I never got one. Well, we also get the WWF Slingum Fling 'em wrestling ring. You'd pull back on the ropes, and then it would like launch the figures in different possessions. Uh, we also get Polcomania workout set, so it's like, you know, dumbbells, uh, jump rope. I mean, this thing is it's cool, but like that's definitely a hard pass for me. I was I was a nerd kid, I was an indoor kid. Like, no, I was I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna get that. Photon looked cool though. Not as cool as laser tag. So between the two, laser tag was cooler, but it had this one has the phaser, the helmet, the chest plate with sensors, um uh a target. Like this was it was pretty awesome. And if I had gotten this one, even if I had gotten this one instead of laser tag, I still would have been pretty happy. But as we turn the page, this is the very last page here, we get wrapping paper by papercraft. And it's just like standard. There's like red and white candy cane stripes, you know, things like that, some bows. I mean, it's just stuff for the people need to wrap presents. And then we get um some random like oh gosh, I don't even know what like science toys. So there's a quadro building set, which is like a con like a construction set. Uh there's an edu science microscope. It's like four powers with uh slides and a drawing device. And then they they actually have like toddler shirts and whimsies with the Toys R Us logo. I mean that's uh Yeah good for them, right? These sweatshirts too. I mean that's cool. So I mean I would have loved a sweatshirt that said I'm a Toys R Us kid, even if it was like bright yellow, I'll I would have taken it. Now this one looks like it's from New York because um all the prices are for Amherst, Clarence, Greece, Hamburg, Utica, uh, and New Hartford. So not too bad. Uh it's pretty cool stuff, honestly, but I gotta say, the whole thing, I probably my favorites would be the Thundercats or the Robotech page. But uh more likely the Thundercats. But you know, G.I. Joe taught us that knowing is half the battle. Well, I think the other half is just walking into the action figure aisle and being absolutely blindsided by the awesomeness, right? Well, you'll find sensational selections and super savings. Toys are us plus a flexible return policy that ensures that you'll have a very Merry Christmas. And don't forget our gift certificates. They make checking us out on our social media pages, which you can find at linktree.com slash totally radchmas. And if you're feeling like a kid sprinting down the aisles, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more people and spread some rad holiday cheer. Now don't forget to check out our merch shop on tpublic.com and our super dope website, totallyradchristmas.com. Dear Santa, I'm a Toys R Us kid. Later, dudes.

SPEAKER_06 21:08

I don't wanna grow up. I'm a Toys R Us kid.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

You just said the magic words that look like you did, and look at the low prices, everyone's talking about it, Toys R Us. My friend talking to me from Callegible. Plays aid learning games that comes with a game board voice and a great Toys R Us price, and Callegal's talking feature with five words and number game levels. And my talking computer full center four left and toys.