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MOUSETRAP, Monopoly, Jenga, Connect 4 - the moment you set foot inside Totally Toys, the memories come flooding back.
And that’s before you even spot the Lego Harry Potter advent calendar, Hungry Hungry Hippo, Mega Marble Run and the Sylvanian Families Sky Blue Terrace Gift Set.
After 50 years working in retail, Bristol toy shop owner Paul Carpenter knows a thing or two about customer service.
The owner of this independent toy shop on Gloucester Road since 1988, Paul puts much of it down to his management training at Woolworths, where he worked for 17 years prior to opening his own shop.
“I loved Woolworths and I was upset beyond belief when it closed,” Paul tells me, looking genuinely upset at the mention of his previous employer.
“They were great people to work for and they sold everything you can imagine. I started as a trainee manager and then became a store manager around the country.”
Working for Woolworths wasn’t Paul’s first job. When he left school at 16, he wanted to work on the family farm in Warwickshire but when his dad sold it, he had no choice but to find a job locally.
As he didn’t want to work in a factory, he got a job at county council offices, working in the children’s department, but he soon realised office work wasn’t for him.
“One of my friends was a trainee manager at Woolworths so I applied for a job there. It was the best thing I ever did,” says the 68-year-old.
It was only when Paul fell off a ladder and was off work for six months that he started to think about starting his own business.
“I was running really big stores at the time but I wasn’t going to make it to regional manager so I started to think about opening my own shop after 17 years.
“Woolworths had given us shares, which made quite a lot of money. For the first time in my life I had a big lump of money and enough to buy a shop.”
After looking at potential premises in other areas including Cornwall, and toying with the idea of opening a sweet shop, Paul looked at Bristol and bought the Gloucester Road premises in 1988.
“I was looking for an ongoing business and this was a shop called Toys Plus. It was Martens before that so it has been a shop selling toys for a very long time.”
Paul says many of the games he was selling when he first opened are still among the best-sellers of today.
“If you look at the top ten now, they’re probably the same as back then, it’s a lot of the same stuff things like Mousetrap, Monopoly, Twister and Cluedo - but then a good game is a good game.
“A lot of the classics have gone like chess and Snakes and Ladders - they have lost a bit of popularity but we still sell them, just in smaller quantities.
“Games like Scrabble still sell and we still stock things like Top
Trumps, which is a great game and also a great way of learning.
“Top Trumps used to be just a boy thing and the cards always had to have cars or tanks, but they feature all sorts of things now.
“Actually, I remember we had Top Trumps for the band One Direction once. It was a good idea but people forgot there was only four of them in the band so it wasn’t much of a game!”
As I talk to Paul in his shop, there is a constant stream of customers at the till, many of them with toddlers in awe of the well-stocked shelves of toys and games.
A father of four with five grandchildren aged from four months to 12 years, Paul keeps on top of trends via his family as much as the toys reps who contact him.
“The toy industry produces top tens for bestsellers and I look at them and they are totally different to my top ten and I’m not inspired to stock the ones on their lists. It’s not what we’re about.
“As retailers we are blessed to have the people supporting the
local shops like they do around Gloucester Road.”
Now preparing for the Christmas rush, Paul describes business as ‘exceptional’ since reopening postpandemic.
“The summer holidays was very busy for us because fewer people were going away and it hasn’t stopped since then.
“There has been renewed loyalty and people who came here as children are now bringing their kids here to buy their toys.
“We used to run a games workshop upstairs and we had about 500 members at one point, most of them lads. It was like a youth club. A lot of them come in now with their big beards, pushing prams – I love that.”
At a time when many children are glued to electronic devices and staring at screens, it’s heartening to see how busy Totally Toys is on the morning I visit the shop, and encouraging that the customers are buying traditional toys.
Paul says: “Lego is still huge for us, it always has been. They’re a demanding company, as you’d expect, but you don’t just suddenly decide to become a Lego stockist and place an order.
“They don’t want too many stockists, they don’t want them close to each other and you have to fulfil a certain criteria.
“Lego don’t want you to just sell the best-sellers but they’ve linked themselves with other brands like Star Wars, Marvel and Harry Potter.
“But children still like the basic bricks, of course, and nobody ever throws away their Lego – not even adults!”
Other products selling well include the range of handpainted Schleich animals and a large selection of educational wooden games and jigsaws made by Orchard Toys.
Paul says: “Since the pandemic, people have become more nostalgic about their toys. Wooden toys are safe and in hard times people go back to basics, they can be sentimental about toys.”
Paul is now joined in the shop by his daughter, Jane, who works four days a week.
“It’s the best thing that ever happened and she has brought new energy into the shop as well,” says Paul, who strongly believes that some toys should also be educational as well as fun.
“Evie, my youngest daughter, works with kids with special needs and things like fidget toys are on their list of tools for kids to help with distraction and dealing with concentration.
“Companies like Orchard sell education but disguise it nicely as something that’s fun. If you have a board game called My First Maths, for example, that’s not going to go down too well on Christmas Day.
“But if you call it something like Two and Two Go To The Zoo, kids will be more interested.”
So what keeps Paul motivated after 33 years running one of Bristol’s only independent toy shops?
“I really enjoy my job, I love meeting the people and the fact the products constantly evolve.
“I have some reps who moan the whole time they’re here but would I really stay in a job this long if I hated it?”
After 50 years in retail, Paul says he’s still learning but he can only remember one instance when his buying skills were put to the test.
“Because my dad was a farmer and I didn’t inherit any farm equipment when the farm was sold, my first order was a load of tractor toys.
“I bought the tractors but soon realised all the people wanted at the time was to buy toy models of skip lorries.
“I dusted those tractors for years after and they never sold!”
If you look at the top ten best selling games now, they’re probably the same as back when I started, it’s a lot of the same stuff – things like Mousetrap, Monopoly, Twister and Cluedo – but then a good game is a good game.
Paul Carpenter