Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The first image above made me think of Villa Villekulla over the weekend, as I took it on 4 September 2021 during my Labor Day weekend visit, so I figured it was time to do a closing.

The original Villa Villekulla of course was the ramshackle, but magical, house that Pippi Longstocking lived in alone (but with good friends close by) while her father was off plying the seas in the children's books from the early 20th century. And in fact, Fernandina already had a Villa Villekulla connection as one of the Pippi movies was filmed there with a particular house in Old Town (at 212 Estrada Street to be exact), doing duties as the setting during filming.

My memory is that the toy store opened sometime after that, when the connection was still in people's minds, but after the movie itself was largely forgotten (it was not a big hit). The location on 2nd Street, next to the Hampton Inn is an interesting one in that there are two suites in the building not exactly separated. You enter through the street level entrance, and the toy store area is off to your left, though you are basically in it already, but there is a staircase to the right, without a separate door or any barrier, which leads up to the top floor suite which is a totally separate business. When the toy store opened, the top floor was a pretty decent Italian restaurant, and later it became an art gallery. It was a bit of an odd setup.

Anyway, the toy store was somewhat eclectic, with lots of stock that I never saw elsewhere, and generally on my fall or winter visits, I would pick up a number of Christmas presents for my nieces. I remember a number of different type of slime or putty, markers for coloring on windows, throwing balls that would bounce on waves, old-time "car bingo" cards, sidewalk paints & quirky Asian toys. I also picked up a model hot-air balloon as in their logo that spins in the wind.

On my trip last December however, I noticed things had changed. The store had been rearranged leaving much more free-space, possibly to draw attention away from the fact that there was considerably less stock. I still picked up several things, but I took it as a bad sign, something confirmed when I went back in July to find the storfront empty, and papered over with notices of a new enterprise moving in.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but at one point I found a story about how the store was adding an event space (I can't find it again now). In December, the upstairs art gallery was gone, and my surmise is that Villa Villekulla, possibly already stressed, took the space over to bring in more money, over-extended themselves and had to give it up. That's speculation, all I can say for sure is that their Facebook indicated that they had been trying to sell the store, ended up being unable to do so, and had to vacate on 30 April 2025.

Here is a bit more shared on a neighboring store's Facebook.

It's a shame, it was a nice little place for many years.

So fare there are no signs advertising big closings savings at the Toys 'R' US Columbiana Mall outparcel site in Harbison, but it's just a matter of time as the firm officially threw in the towel last week and says it will not emerge from bankruptcy.

I missed the golden age of Toys 'R' Us, and in fact don't think I've ever been into a store. For us, the big thing was the Sears Christmas Wishbook with wonders on every page, here's an appreciation from someone who was not too old for the golden age, along with some reminders that Toys 'R' Us has been in and out of trouble for a long time.

The funny thing is that while TRU doesn't sell as many toys as it used to, it still sells a *lot* of toys, and you have to wonder how bad the debts must be if you have bankruptcy protection and can't come up with a viable plan for the way forward while you are still selling lots of toys.

A few links:

According to CNN, the timing of closing sales and the final closing have yet to be determined.

A trademark collector may be bringing KB Toys back as popup stores due to the TRU bankruptcy.

Amazon may buy some of the stores though I wouldn't hold my breath for the Columbia area.

I have to say this store does not look appealing to me. It looks a bit run down, boxy and not 'fun'. I realize there are limits to what you can do with stodgy Columbia codes, but to me something like *this* says TOY STORE!

And finally, thanks, guys, for that whole backwards 'Я' thing. Not.

I remember going into Learning Express sometime last year while I was looking for something for my niece. Unfortunately, I can't recall what I was looking for or if I found it. I do recall that the place was upscale and had some toys that I would have been interested in back in the day.

OK, who am I kidding -- I'd still be interested in them!

(Hat tip to commenter Terry)

UPDATE 10 April 2013 -- Interesting. Now it's to reopen as Learning Express under new management:

UPDATE 22 April 2013 -- Open again:

UPDATE 27 April 2020 -- As commenter Jacob Pittman notes, this store is closed once more. According to the chain website, the only curren tMidlands location is at 5175 Sunset Blvd., Suite 12 Lexington, SC 29072.

Here is the press release for the reopening of this storefont, which apparently took place on 12 April 2013.

Teddy Mountain is a stuff-your-own-teddy-bear franchaise. The Columbia store was at The Village At Sandhill next to the Nestle cookie store, and just down from Bluefin.

I'm not entirely sure when the store closed, but as the last mention I can find on the Sandhill website is for 30 April 2012, I'm putting it as "Spring 2012".

I have to admit I wasn't aware of Creative Kids in Five Points until I heard it was closing, despite having bought a good number of toys the past several years. It looks to have been an interesting place (though that big guy up front is a little scary :-)

(Hat tip to commenter Mike D)

Not really a closing, but I was at Bruegger's Sunday, and happened to notice that the building housing Be Beep and The Happy Cafe is being re-roofed.

The Be Beep area was roped off, but they aren't open on Sunday anyway so I doubt they'll have any downtime.

For a while, the Dentsville area had two big-box toy stores as well as a couple of smaller storefronts inside Columbia mall. I can't remember the name of the first of the big ones to go, but it was in the same little plaza on Decker Boulevard and Trenholm Road Extension that Winn Dixie was in and that The Comedy House is in now. As I recall, the closing caused a lot of brouhaha and local ill-will because the place timed their closing to be after Christmas shopping and before Christmas returns. It seems to me there was another way in which they did customers dirty in addition to that, but the details escape me at this remove.

At any rate, you might have expected that with the entire "destination toy store" market in the area now ceded to it, Toys 'R' Us would have prospered and have had some incentive to stay put, but that proved not to be the case. Since I wasn't really a toy shopper at the time, I didn't pay much attention to where the store went. I just figured it had joined the general flight from Dentsville and the Decker Corridor to somewhere down Two Notch. However, doing a quick online Yellow Pages search, the only location I see in the Columbia area is near Columbiana Center. I know I'm certainly not driving out there for toys -- not when there's Amazon.

The building has never had another tenant since Toys 'R' Us departed. It appears to be in fairly good shape (some minor tagging, but only on glass) though the architecture now looks a little dated. Unfortunately, with the upcoming closing of Dillards, I can't see that any first tier replacement will be willing to locate at Columbia Mall any time soon.

Update 27 Jan 2010: Well something is happening at the old Toys 'R' Us building. From the work going on, it would appear that something will be going in there:

UPDATE 1 April 2010 -- Looks like the Virginia College Career Center is ready to open:

UPDATE 13 February 2021: Changing "Columbia Mall outparcel" in the post title to the full street address, updating tags and adding map icon.