Time trip among vintage toys, candy

Richard Tedesco

Walking into Bobb Howard’s General Store on Lakeville Road in New Hyde Park is like walking into a Twilight Zone of candy and toys that you thought must be extinct.

But if you’ve had odd cravings to chomp on atomic fireballs or goobers or magnetically rearrange the facial hair on Wooly Willy, Bobb Howard’s at 581 Lakeville Road is a one-stop nostalgia shop.

The general store is stacked with jars of circus peanuts, chocolate babies, skooter pies, Mallo cups, Sifer Valomilk, wax fangs and tootsie roll pops where cigarettes and other things were stacked after Bobb Howard’s – then a transmission repair and service station – made its office space into the area’s first convenience store at a filling station. 

The gas pumps are gone, but in 1993, the transformation gradually started from convenience to nostalgic concoctions.

“We started converting it over,” said Eileen Kaplin Wysel, who owns the store with her husband, Ronnie. “My family always liked all the old stuff.”

Her late father owned a 1929 Model ‘A’ Ford and Wysel, 60, said she still owns a 1967 Austin Healey.

“It sort of evolved together. Why not surround ourselves with fun?” she said, admitting that she and Ronnie, 63, at still kids at heart.

It’s not like a lot of these old sweets and trinkets are still being made. So it’s taken some treasure hunting in less than glamorous environs to get the goods.

“We go in the back of these old warehouses where no one’s been for decades,” Ronnie said.

The result is a trove of jujubes, Astro pops and Bonamo’s Turkish Taffy, along with Aqua Zone rockets, diving submarines, stickball bats and spaldeens – still being made – and original siren whistle rings.

Not too many customers are too old to remember the contents of their store that boasts 1,000 different classic confections and oddball playthings. But even generation X, Y and Z video gamers too young to have ever seen this stuff before can find something to like.

“It’s something different for the kids. These things haven’t been seen in decades,”  Eileen said.

A lot of the business is generated by word of mouth. Or it has a kind of viral generational marketing attraction: parents bring their kids in one week and come back with the grandparents the next week. And of course, there the trade from unsuspecting first-time visitors looking to kill some time while their car’s being fixed.

It’s hard to think of anyplace where you can buy a old-fashioned school lunchbox – Elvis or The Beatles – a Robot X-7, Lamb Chop dolls, candy cigarettes and that bubble gum like gold nuggets that comes in those little sacks.

No special occasions drive the business, Eileen said, although people do stop regularly to stock up before hitting a movie theater. And Bobb Howard’s does Halloween parties with Halloween pez, candy corn and – naturally – those chewable wax lips.

There’s even a post-Halloween bump in the business, with some parents actually buying back the candy their kids collect and buying replacement candy they’re sure is safe – with that added old timey comfort factor.

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