Phil Gillam: Toying around with Shrewsbury memories

Little plastic flames would fly out of the back as you ran the car along the carpet.

It had an ice-breaker that would drop out of the front at the press of a button.

And it fired tiny missiles too.

All this put me in mind of toys generally and of my all-time favourite toy shop – Pickering's – which was in Mardol.

Mr John Pickering, who died in 2006, was one of Shrewsbury's grand old characters and a man widely known of course as the much-loved proprietor of that glorious, long-established toy shop.

As a little boy growing up in the 1960s, I found Pickering's shop was an Aladdin's cave in which I could happily spend the best part of an afternoon, admiring the thousands of toys on offer. Corgi cars, Triang-Hornby model railway layouts, James Bond stuff, splendid toy soldiers, Airfix model kits, Thunderbirds stuff, Action Man – they were all there.

It was one of Shrewsbury's great old shops (like Wildings and Brattons Pianos, and – one I have written about previously in this column, A R Mitchell's, all of them also now distant memories).

And as an adult, I was privileged to meet and interview Mr Pickering himself in November 1998 in order to write an article about his career for the Shropshire Star.

Mr Pickering certainly knew a thing or two about toys and knew what made children tick. The breadth of this experience was built upon dealing with the generations of little boys and girls who had bought their train sets and their bikes, their water pistols and their Matchbox cars, or their dolls and their skipping ropes, from this man's friendly little toy shop.

The store was a magnet for youngsters for decades. Even in the late 1990s (at the time of the interview) Mr Pickering's trusted, old-fashioned, family-run business continued to attract families – and in the face of stiff opposition from the mighty Toys-R-Us at Meole Brace Retail Park which had opened in 1994.

John's grandfather had founded the company back in 1880, originally occupying the building directly opposite the later shop. There is even a brick in the wall commemorating the extension of that building just before the turn of the century. It reads simply "E S P 1895". "Those are the initials of my grandmother," Mr Pickering had explained to me with great pride. "Ellen Sophia Pickering."

In those days the firm sold agricultural equipment and also sold and repaired cars. They went on to sell and repair motorcycles as well as offering a tyre remoulding service. Gradually, the shop turned its attention towards just bicycles and toys and it was thanks to these, of course, that Pickering's became a magical place for Shrewsbury's little boys and girls.

I will always remember the great man showing me old photographs of the Pickering's business in Shrewsbury through the ages, wonderful pictures of traction engines, cars that might have come out of a Charlie Chaplin film, and serious-looking gentlemen in bowler hats.

Asked what had made his shop so successful over so many years, Mr Pickering had told me: "Some of the bigger places aren't able to deal with customers as individuals. But if a lady pops into our shop and says she has a five-year-old niece. 'What kind of thing might she like?' We are always able to recommend certain things and spend a little time with the customer. People still seem to like that."

You know what? I think he was spot-on with that comment. He was spot-on about a lot of things.

Ah, yes. Those great old shops from the Shrewsbury of yesteryear.