While shopping recently in Rockville, Maryland, I stumbled across the store for wired kids of the '90s: Zany Brainy. No Barney songs here; the wacky tune "We are the dinosaurs/ Bigger than a grocery store" by Trout Fishing in America was playing as I walked in.
Calling itself a "Multi-Media Educational Superstore," Zany Brainy sells books, art supplies, science toys, videos, music, computer soft-ware, and more than 500,000 stickers. (Shiny, glue-backed pictures are an essential part of childhood in the '90s.) But don't look for action villains in this value-priced superstore - on stickers or anywhere else. Zany Brainy sells only safe, nontoxic, nonviolent, and nonsexist merchandise.
On my visit, the joint was jumping with kids - in the play area (where you try stuff out before buying it), in the software demo station (stocked with computers and videogame players), and in the big-screen-TV theater.
I happen to be a mechanical toy junkie. And Zany Brainy has a nice selection of Capsela toys and robot assembly kits. Luckily, I left my credit card at home, saving the mortgage payment from an almost uncontrollable impulse to fill my home with plastic battery-operated robots.
Zany Brainy, locations in the eastern and southern US: +1 (610) 896 1500.
STREET CRED
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Zany Brainy
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