Middendorf Discount Toy Basement Ad – Dec. 3, 1962

Toys have certainly changed over the years.

It seems to me there used to be two types: timeless toys that were simply fun (often requiring some physical activity), and toys that allowed kids to use their imagination and mimic grownups.

You see both of them in this ad for Middendorf Discount Toy Basement, which was part of Middendorf Pharmacy, located at 2051 Broadway. The ad ran in the Journal on December 3, 1962.

On the 'pure fun' side of things, you see roller skates, which never seem to go out of style, as well as coloring books and puzzles. 

And then there are the toys that allowed the kids to fantasize about what they might want to grow up to be: baby buggies, strollers and dolls (for future mothers); an IDEAL Ride-a-Tank (for future soldiers); a toy piano (for future concert pianists); toy cash registers (for future store employees); and a toy telephone (for future spam callers).

With a nod to the TV watching kids, there is a TV Stool for $1.99. There's one on eBay right now that somehow survived the past sixty years.

And there's even a toy in the ad that we had in the Brady household: the Kenner Super Show Projector. 

Images courtesy of toyandcomicheaven.com

The Kenner Super Show Projector allowed you to project color comic strip slides (mostly TV cartoon favorites) on the wall for a primitive show of sorts. 

It could also function as an overhead projector so that you could present your own drawings on the wall. We did this a lot in the Brady household, and it made for some fun evenings. It probably encouraged my love of drawing as well.

The weirdest thing about the Super Show Projector was that it came with jointed, cardboard "puppets" that you could manipulate offscreen using the long, attached 'handles.' We had the Rocky and Bullwinkle versions shown below, as well as Popeye and Brutus (or Bluto if you prefer). 

I don't remember ever using these things. They were so odd-looking that we didn't know how to operate them!

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(I also wrote about our Kenner projector back here in a 2012 blog post.)