Toy shopping in New England in the 1960s and 1970s once meant going to locally-owned toy stores and buying unforgettable toys like an "Electroshot Shooting Gallery," a magic kit with an overwhelming smell of polyvinylchlroide, Lionel Trains, and a game with "pop-o-matic" dice.

Stores like Bowen's in Bedford, Mass., Child World in Medford, Mass., Playtime in Arlington, Mass., and Lechmere Sales in Cambridge, Mass., led the pack for us, providing a wonderland of colorful holiday merchandise -- some familiar and others, hard-to-find and unique and exciting like model ships that replicated the U.S.S. Constitution or the Sancta Maria. Our television favorites like Bugs Bunny, Fat Albert, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Sherman and Peabody and even Tennessee Tuxedo and Chumley showed up on merchandise as puppets, dolls and in books. There was even a Monkees toy guitar that generated more interest than the lackluster television show and music that made the "fabricated four" a smash sensation.

The precursor to holiday toy shopping was receiving the Sears Catalog in the mail. How exciting it was to bypass the boring clothing, appliance, home and garden and audio/visual sections and thumb right to the toy pages. We rarely went to Sears, however, for toys. I'm not sure why, as the catalog looked so promising. Perhaps we just felt more at home with the local toy shop owners and employees who made us feel like family.

The toy store lines at our favorite toy stores weren't quite as long and impatient, and the music in the background was void of Weird Al Yancovic and Britney Spears. Toy store employees spoke full, clear English sentences and were genuinely excited to help you. They represented their owners well. Store owners would never hire some of the help you see today, the ones that sometimes look and act like future inmates of America.

Children were respectful, not bowling over people en route to locating their favorite toy. Parents came with cash, and store employees used their mathematical skills learned in high school to instantly provide the right amount of change.

During the Christmas season, the toy store owners diligently watched over their hired help and always offered parents and kids a "Merry Christmas" -- without anyone becoming offended and reporting it to the ACLU. The store owners seemed to often sport a bow tie, pencil thin mustache and horn-rimmed glasses. That store owner could also take some days off, as he trusted his hired help.

In the toy store display windows, employees set up Christmas displays with the preciseness of an civil engineer (Bechtel Parsons wasn't around then) -- Christmas lights, fake snow, artificial Christmas trees weighed down by too many ornaments, moving displays, those revolving color light machines illuminating the ceiling and toys, toys, toys, made one gravitate towards the store.

Toy stores were indeed a holiday wonderland for us, places to be a kid, stay a kid and feel good about being a kid. And that went for the adults, too. Customer service and proper store attitude may have left us long ago, but youthfulness never goes away. Locally-owned toy stores beaming with pride are an integral part of that magical time of youth, one that will never be forgotten.