It doesn’t look like much now.
Overgrown and broken, the empty square sits on the outskirts of a once-thriving shopping plaza. Nature makes no bones about reclaiming the space: sowthistle and bedstraw poke through the cracked asphalt, while nimblewill and wild lettuce thrive in the scattered, sun-baked mounds of dirt. I’m alone, save for a lone crow on the distant power line. There is nothing to indicate the site’s former tenants, with only concrete highway barriers to mark its former dimensions. You’d never know it, but this is where the first Hills department store opened in 1957.
Growing up in western Pennsylvania in the 1970s, Hills was a huge part of my life. In the days before Walmart, the department store was the place to go for all non-grocery items. That meant shoes and clothing, school and household supplies, and — you guessed it — toys.
The toy department at Hills rocked. Unlike my family’s other store of choice, Sears (which sported an anemic toy section), Hills really went all-out when it came to catering to the younger crowd. To young Anthill it seemed as if they carried everything — be it Mego Super-Heroes, Kenner’s Star Wars figures, or oddball “trendy” figures like Suckerman or Stretch Armstrong — you could find them all at Hills. This was by design: at least 10 percent of Hills’ yearly sales could be chalked up to toys and the company knew it. In the 1980s the store was known for its motto “Hills is where the toys are,” and no more so than at Christmastime.
The endcaps of the Hills toy department were often clear plastic-enclosed spaces dedicated to showing off a particular line. I remember staring in stunned amazement at the Mego Micronauts display. They were all there: the spectral black and white Pharoid rising from his Time Chamber, the Galactic Warrior racing across the cratered Styrofoam landscape in the Photon Sled, while cosmic heavies Baron Karza and Andromeda pitted their Magno Powers against one another. Above, clear fishing line allowed the villainous Acroyear to chase multi-hued Space Gliders through an imagined sky. I stood slack-jawed before the display, marveling at the sight. I’d never seen so many Micronauts in one place. To witness the whole collection unboxed and on display in one place was a revelation.
I rushed home and attempted to rebuild the scene I’d witnessed, but it wasn’t the same. For one, I lacked the deep end-cap enclosure that allowed the figures to be set up in a massive battle scenario, and, more importantly, I just didn’t have that many Micronauts. But still, the experience stayed with me. As both a toy collector and a diorama builder I can say it was a key moment: I could see that having a kick-ass collection and displaying it in an exciting way was a doable option. Not only that, seeing all of those figures engaged in that nameless battled helped engender a love of storytelling that continues to this day.
My local Target has a Lego endcap much like that Micronauts endcap. The difference is, this display was manufactured specifically by Lego. Every store has the same one: all of the figures stand in the same carefully-calculated places, with all of the vehicles and accessories arranged just so. While it’s cool this sort of thing still exists and kids have the chance to have the same experience that I did, I can’t help but feel something is missing. I like to think of that oh-so-’70s Hills employee, just back from a break and inspired by a hotboxing session in his ’76 Dodge Charger, putting that Micronauts display together. I imagine his delight at the clear colored plastic coming to life beneath the in-store florescence, his frustration at attempting to tie the slick plastic fishing-line in knots taut enough to hold weight. I like to think of his sense of satisfaction upon completion of his task, knowing full well he was going to blow some young minds with his crazy setup. That, in part, is the beauty of brick-and-mortar stores.
Its a great feeling to come home from a long day at work or school and find new toys waiting in your mailbox. Its fantastic that we no longer need to spend countless hours and valuable gas hunting every store within a 100-mile-radius of us to complete the latest wave of Marvel Legends. But we’ve lost something in the process; the idea of retail as a showcase not just for products, but for dreams. We view the world through our phones and laptops, tiny screens that diminish the presentation of what might be years of work. Yes, of course you can appreciate something in hand, but how do you know you want it in your hand unless you can see the thing for what it is? Store displays were great for this sort of thing: to be able to study something “in action” and from multiple angles without having to open a package is a huge boon to the consumer and the toy manufacturer alike.
Of course, there’s a downside to allowing the public this degree of access to product. In spite of extensive precautions to thwart it, theft remains an issue at retail, and I must cop to one incident in particular. It was the summer of 1985 and my younger brother’s birthday. The family drove out to Hills to buy his desired gift, Kenner’s M.A.S.K. Boulder Hill playset. There was only one on the shelves, and it had already been opened. We checked to make sure the set was complete — it was, and then some. Several additional figures and a vehicle were inside the box along with the playset. Obviously someone had returned their purchases hastily, packing what were separate items together inside the playset box. What happened next amazes me to this day.
In a kind of toy-induced frenzy I began packing additional M.A.S.K. figures and vehicles into the box. At first my mother and brother laughed, thinking I was just fooling around, but 15-year-old Anthill was as serious as a heart attack. I shamelessly packed that box full, getting my brother the bulk of the first series in one fell swoop. I guess the thinking was, if we were caught, we would just claim we found it that way, but it was a crazy and brazen move nonetheless. My mom was a good woman and didn’t tolerate shenanigans, but for whatever reason she opted to go along with this one caper. We got away with it too, laughing afterwards in the shadow of Boulder Hill.
Its strange to stand here. While this wasn’t my Hills, this is where they all sprang from. This patch of sun-baked asphalt gave birth to the plastic dreams and action figures wishes of my childhood, to memories pleasing and bittersweet. For all I know, it’s where this R5-D4 was originally bought, the intrepid ‘droid rolling through the implacable sands of time to find me in the here and now. I can only imagine…
In accordance with some uncanny cosmic justice, I inadvertently sat on an actual anthill while shooting the above pictures. I didn’t even realize it until I got in the car and my wife discovered hundreds of the little buggers all over my pants and back. Wish I’d named myself Man in the Moneypile…
Discuss this article on the Fwoosh forums!
