December 22, 2025
TOYS THAT ATTRACT
GROWN-UPS, BOUGHT.
BIG DEPARTMENT STORES ARE
OPEN EVENINGS THIS WEEK.
Crowds Down Town at Night -- Fire
Department Playthings Most
Popular, Patrol Wagons
and Aeroplanes Next.
The announcement posted early that most of the big department stores would be open evenings this week up to Friday night inclusive brought the usual Christmas crowds to the down town districts last night in all the stores people who had braved the crisp winter air to be present with their shopping bags meant business.
The department stores which did not open last night were Emery, Bird, Thayer's, John Taylor's and Bernheimer's. The music stores did not close and while the crowds in them were only comfortably dense their sales were large from the viewpoint of the money taken in.
Some of the heavy sellers among toys last night were mechanical fire department outfits, patrol wagons and flying machines of different patterns.
Fire engines and hose wagons, toy salesmen say, have always been favorites. This is because a fire is spectacular and exciting and inviting to the imagination of old and young people alike. A child is most apt to get the toy in his stocking Christmas Eve that his elders enjoy and appreciate, they say, and so the manufacturers try to please both. Patrol wagons have always sold next to fire apparatus until this year.
Now they are running a distant third with miniatures of Wright's invention in full working order and capable of making short flights running close to first.
The theory of all toy shopmen interviewed last night was that little boys and girls might appreciate a good many gifts more than a flying machine, but that their parents, brothers, sisters and other relatives are anxious to see how the machine works.
