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News Article
Delaware beach store offers Yesterday’s Fun
By Katherine McKerrow

OCEAN VIEW, Del. — The seashore is awash with nostalgia. From the simple pleasures of swimming in the ocean and building castles made of sand, to the time-honored traditions of eating ice cream and playing miniature golf, the beach is the perfect place for reconnecting with one’s childhood.

If you visit the Delaware beaches, there’s now another way to revisit the past. Yesterday’s Fun, located in Ocean View, is a wonderland of playthings old and new, with a decided emphasis on the “old.” The shop offers an outstanding selection of vintage toys and games, lovingly curated by owner Brendan Heneghan. The toys here are not all locked away and out of reach (although some of the more valuable stock is kept high on shelves and in glass cases). Instead, many of the toys and games beckon the visitor to pick them up and play with them.

The store opened in 2009. Heneghan jokes, “I waited for the worst economy in 80 years to sell stuff people had already thrown away.” But Yesterday’s Fun has managed to survive in this rough economy. The story of Yesterday’s Fun begins with the birth of Heneghan’s son, now nine years old. Heneghan wanted something to do to earn money while fulfilling the role of stay-at-home dad.

Through eBay, he started selling VHS tapes of beloved and cult TV shows and movies that had not yet made the leap to DVD.

Then he decided to pick up some of the original, iconic Fisher Price Little People toys for his son. After seeing what prices the classic toys were fetching online, he started scouring yard sales and thrift stores for items. Before he realized it, he had accumulated a boatload of Little People. And remembering how the toys were selling on eBay, he decided to follow suit, selling Little People and many other classic vintage toys.

Soon, he had so many toys “socked away” that he was ready to open a brick-and-mortar store.

Heneghan spends nine months of the year traveling, accumulating, repairing and cleaning vintage stock. He gathers everything from Happy Meal toys to original Star Wars playsets. He also buys items from drop-in customers. At the start of the summer season, approximately three-quarters of his inventory is vintage; the remaining quarter is a carefully picked selection of new toys that don’t feel out of place beside the classic and older items. As he sells off the vintage things, the new items take their places on the shelves. Heneghan’s philosophy is that the store should always seem packed with fun.

Heneghan also purposefully maintains an old-fashioned atmosphere in the store. He admits he feels a kinship with the store clerks in old movies, running up and down ladders to fetch stock. There are no bar codes, no scanners.

Items are marked with a simple price sticker, or placed in bins with items of the same price. Purchases are rung up on a basic cash register, and since the toys are priced to the quarter, Heneghan makes kids figure out the math themselves. “That’s just the dad in me,” he says.

Heneghan reports that his average customer is a kid visiting the beach with his grandparents. However, he also attracts toy collectors and curious adults who like to come in and remember their childhood.

Heneghan and Tim, his employee for the summer, are ready and willing to show kids how to play with the toys and games (Thursday nights are Game Nights). There’s also a video game room, with working consoles dating back to the Atari age. Heneghan points out that the Atari system itself fostered an old-fashioned camaraderie among players: The short cord connecting the game controllers forced players to sit close and enjoy the games together.

With all the flashy new toys on the market, why are kids buying up vintage playthings? Heneghan credits the Internet sites like Hulu and Netflix with bringing TV and movie characters of the past into kids’ lives. And since toy companies are no longer making and marketing toys with these characters, vintage toys have found their audience.

The older toys are also often better made and more imaginative. Heneghan draws attention to the Adventure People manufactured in the 1970s by Fisher Price. They were small action-figure type toys depicting “real life heroes.”

He points out that the astronaut figures were almost always female. Today, there are few space toys marketed toward girls.

Vacationers and daytrippers headed for the sunny beaches of Delaware are in for a treat at Yesterday’s Fun. Owner Brendan Heneghan strives to have something to remind everyone of their childhood.

Yesterday’s Fun will be open seven days a week until November, when it will switch to its winter schedule, being open two weekends per month.

Contact: (302) 539-1938,

www.yesterdaysfuntoys.com

8/18/2011
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