Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Blast from the past!

One of the nice things about the first couple months of our store is the people who walk in and reminisce about Mitchell's. It's kinda bittersweet, as we're very happy to have opened our own store, but we - like most of our customers - miss Mitchell's very much. 

On Saturday, a former Mitchell's customer named Morris Freschman stopped in. Morris had with him a toy he had purchased at Mitchell's back in 1963. It was in wonderful condition, still in it's original box. It was a 'Child Guidance Musical Railroad' toy - a battery-powered toy train that ran on its own track. The track had 'ties' that were made of little metal pieces - the kind you see in a xylophone. Each piece was color coded with a musical note. When you arranged the 'ties' on the track, they would play a song when the train ran over the 'ties.' There was an instructional booklet that showed the different ways of arranging the track to play different songs. It actually looked pretty neat! I wonder when they stopped making it...

We took a picture of Morris with the toy for the blog. Thanks for bringing it in, Morris!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joe -- Learning Resources makes a product called "Melody Express Musical Train" that is very similar (we had it in our catalogue this year.) It sells for about $39.99. So now all your customers can have one! Love your blog. Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

I LOVED that train. I had one, and I remember spending hours playing with it!