Your children's pretend shop

Dear users, dear authors,
Did you have a pretend shop when you were a child? Did you enjoy playing with it? Do your children or grandchildren have a pretend shop?

I didn’t have one as a child. There were three of us kids, we lived in a very small apartment, and so there wasn’t much space. At Christmas, the dollhouse would come down from the attic. No play store.

When my grandson was little, we always played store. We used a board as a counter and set everything up on it. So it was all improvised. I did a lot of crafting and crocheting for the play store. 

I had a toy store and a dollhouse; my sister had a dollhouse. We both played with them for a long time. Our father built all three of them for us, and our mother stocked them.

Best regards, Inge

Yes, I had a little toy store. Back then, the popular brands came in little packets filled with puffed rice. And the fruit was made of candy. It was really fun. But it’s nothing like the toy stores of today.

Mine was a typical ’60s toy store—light wood with colorful drawers. And yes, the little packages always contained puffed rice. At Christmas, there were sometimes marzipan accessories, like sausage platters or things like that. But the selection was limited. When I see all these crocheted treats here today, I immediately want to have a toy store again.

Oh yes, I had one too—with little puffed rice packets—and there used to be those plastic fruits filled with effervescent powder; they ended up in the play store as well.