Time Capsule

As a boy, Dan Hare shared toys with his siblings and cousins. So he saved money from his newspaper and mowing routes for his own toys, including treasured Batman comics and cards. Like childhood items often do, some of his Batman toys got sold at a yard sale. But as an adult, he wanted them back. Hare went to an auction in 1981, saw a candy dish with a stack of 1966 Topps cards featuring a No. 1 Batman black bat card he once had and needed to bid on it.

“My heart was pounding,” Hare says. “My wife jokingly blames that one card for everything.”

By everything, he means rebuilding his Batman and vintage toy collection into a much bigger one and walking away from his engineering career to start the Toys Time Forgot store in Canal Fulton in 1991. The vintage shop was inspired by exactly what Hare did: getting childhood toys back.

“I want it to be a memory overload,” he says. “They can see all the things they had, remembered or wanted and never got.”

A ’50s Captain Kangaroo game, a ’60s Chatty Cathy talking doll and ’70s redline Hot Wheels cars transport visitors back to their childhoods when they enter the 4,300-square-foot store. All of the toys are in “Christmas morning condition” with no missing pieces or doctored parts. It’s rare, but collectors have actually gotten their toys back, including one Pennsylvania motorist who happened into the store after he saw a roadside sign.

“All the sudden I hear a scream. I’m running over and he said, This is mine,” Hare recalls. “There inside this G.I. Joe lunchbox was his name. I got goosebumps.” It turns out his mother sold it at a garage sale in Pennsylvania, and somewhere along the way, Hare bought it.

His shop has built a strong reputation, with sellers often coming to him and buyers from as far as Japan. His windup toys have even been featured in the credits on the Boomerang network for cartoons.

This past year has been his best in his 30-year run, and he attributes it to the pandemic and the way nostalgic items boost shoppers’ moods.

“Every time they look at it, that reminds them of a better time when they were young,” Hare says.

Because he’s seen how powerful toys can be in reigniting childhood magic, Hare helps locate about 200 vintage toys each Christmas. His most impactful was when a customer wanted to gift his ill brother a game called Battling Tops that they used to play on Christmas. Hare found one, and after the holidays, the customer handed Hare a photo of him playing Battling Tops with his brother, who had the biggest smile. He explained that it ended up being his brother’s last Christmas, and he died a week later.

“He goes, That last week was one of his best weeks in years. I want to thank you for that. He was crying,” Hare recalls. “I got that picture in my desk to this day. It was really special.” 

137 E. Cherry St., Canal Fulton, thetoystimeforgot.com