Who remembers the huge Australian toy store chain, World 4 Kids? It opened in 1993 in Australia, as a competitor for the arrival of Toys R Us. And later closed in 2002, when it became apparent Australia couldn’t sustain multiple huge toy store chains.
As we know, Toys R Us themselves have since disappeared from most countries as well. Are the days of the huge, supermarket-like toy store, over? (In Australia, we also now have a chain called Toymate, with some fairly big toy stores, but perhaps not quite the size of Toys R Us).
Anyway, I recently picked up this vintage Matchbox limited edition Ford Bronco, store-branded by World 4 Kids and emblazoned with the logos. It even says “1995” on the windscreen. I’m quite pleased to have found it as it’s fairly rare. Quite a cool little nostalgia item. As you never really see any artefacts around these days to suggest that World 4 Kids even existed.
I remember visiting a World 4 Kids in the outer Sydney suburb of Penrith, in about 1995. While my memories of it are vague, it felt similar to Toys R Us inside – a sort of “Bunnings but with toys” (Bunnings is a huge hardware store here in Australia).
Lots of long aisles and tall shelving. I do remember looking at the R/C models they had, but I don’t think I got anything at the time. I think a lot of us actually felt a bit fatigued at the time by the idea of huge toy warehouses, with so many opening all at once.
Later, when World 4 Kids closed down, I do recall that the brand name was oddly used to label the toy aisles inside K Mart stores in Australia. Before fading away entirely, at some point…
I certainly remember this World 4 Kids TV commercial, with its wonderful stop motion dinosaur.
Do you have any memories of World 4 Kids?
For more pics and information about World 4 Kids, I also found these entries on these other excellent blogs: