Blood for the Baron!

there's no toy store in stroud.

back when i was a nipper, you had Woolworths, an independent sports and toys shop and a chemist that also sold toys (had AF stuff!)

then the indie went to only selling sports stuff.

then the chemist went.

now Woolworths is gone and all we've got is what ever tat they sell in Home Bargains and Wilko's.

that sounds depressing sundance, i take it you live in a small village outside stroud do you?

yeah, six miles away.

i forgot, there was also a big Merrets newsagents in the bus station that also sold toys (I remember seeing a ROTJ Jabba in there as a kid and being disgusted by him. and a Cobra Moray that i wanted) but they shut before i even went to secondary school.

oh, there's also Argos...

where i grew up there two newsagents a spar and a co-op that was it, no bank no toy shops nothing, if you wanted anything you had to go into bristol 10 miles away.

well, in Chalford Hill, there was:

a post office, a sweet shop, a newsagents which also sold other stuff, a 'general' shop, a DIY shop, an electrical shop, a clothes shop, a chippy, a hairdresser's and a butcher's when i was a kid.

now, we've got the butcher's, the chippy, the electricals and the hairdresser and that's it. there's a Tesco Express in Bussage over, a post office/Londis in Eastcombe and a shop/post office down in the valley which is a mile downhill and a VERY steep mile back up.

the sweet shop closed when the old lady who ran it died. the DIY shop went out of business as did the general shop, the clothes shop i think went out of business and the newsagent's closed because the bloke running it was ill. the PO became a small time shop selling bread, milk and papers - essentials basically - until the woman running it fiddled about 5K from the Post Office, got caught, got out of a jail sentence due to her 4 year old daughter and buggered off to Cyprus to live with her parents. then it got shut and never reopened.

so, it's either a mile walk (or a few minutes bus ride) to Tesco or Londis or into town on an unreliable bus service.

I remember we had a Fourboys newsagent up the road which had the A.F display and the carded figs on the stand.
The bigger vehicles must have come from the larger stores, the ones the parents went to when you weren`t looking.

i work for forbouys. or rather, Martin's as they are now.

anyone collect Doctor Who figures? we've got Lazlo, the Master and another series 3 figure floating around. MOC...

We had a forbuoys in Wigan or Hindley where I came from Sundance years later they moved and the shop was boarded up. We had a Winstanleys toy shop that had AF toys in Hindley and Toy & Hobby in wigan which went on to sell the Hasbro packaged AF.