Toy Emporium Leans Toward Specialties, Nostalgia

Toy Emporium is on Vine Street and brings back some memories of customers' childhoods.

Trendy is never the catchword for Basia Sobus when she stocks her shelves for the holidays at Toy Emporium, 143 S. Vine, Park Ridge, which has continued a decades-long tradition of a toy store on the west side of Uptown. Sobus emphasizes the educational value and specialties of toys while matching them in age-group-particular sections in her storefront. The Polish native doesn’t pretend to compete with big-box stores, so she can sell according to her tastes and customers’ wants. “I go from newborns to teens,” Sobus said. “But there is no one toy for everybody. I take them to their age group and people decide what they need…There’s never one toy where I say, this is it. “For newborns  (to age 1), everything is touching, smelling. They take …

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