S.W. Randall Toyes & Giftes marks 50th anniversary in Pittsburgh this year

Wooden puzzles, action figures, card and board games may seem old-fashioned to those playing the latest electronics or virtual reality contraption.

However, it’s those hand-held items and more that has kept S.W. Randall Toyes & Giftes around for half a century.

Owner Jack Cohen, 73, of Shadyside, said he’s grateful for all the support people have given his family business the past 50 years.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “Nobody would have ever believed it. This is fun. People come in happy. They leave happy.”

There are locations in Downtown Pittsburgh, Shadyside and the original in Squirrel Hill.

The milestone comes during a rough patch for Cohen and other business owners during the covid-19 pandemic.

Much of the Downtown foot traffic has stopped due to people working from home or unemployed.

“It’s tough today with all this covid stuff going on,” Cohen said. “The office workers haven’t come back to work. That’s our biggest problem. That’s our main customer Monday through Friday. What can you do? Squirrel Hill and Shadyside are better off at this point because at least the people live in the neighborhoods. We’ll still get the Christmas business. We’ve cut back on the help. There’s nothing else you can do.”

About 20 people still work for Cohen.

All products are sanitized in the toy stores and customers must wear masks to get in.

Longtime customer Trina Cerk of Pittsburgh said she’s been visiting the toy shop with her daughter for many years. She still comes to get gifts for her granddaughter.

“There’s just so many things that you don’t see at Walmart and other stores,” Cerk said. “They have some things that are the same, but they have really unusual things. I like the atmosphere of the place … I’m happy with this store, so it better not close.”

Cerk said the Downtown store is a great place to bring the family, especially during the Christmas season.

Cohen credits a lot of the business’s success to his wife of 51 years, Linda.

“She has a lot of good ideas,” said Cohen. “She’s great with displaying stuff, picking items out and going to trade shows.”

They have no desire to add electronics – video games or computer-related accessories – to the dolls, trinkets, costumes, Legos and Playmobil sets, or their other 20,000 products.

“That’s how we started and it still works,” Cohen said. “We sell all the basic stuff. All the basic things you grew up with. We still have the old Fisher-Price toys … We have some hand-held simple electronics and that’s it.”

How it started

Cohen graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969 and began working as a mechanical engineer.

“I hated my job,” Cohen said. “I was just at a desk with a computer. I was so bored. No windows, I couldn’t stand it.”

After finding no joy in the field for about a year, he and his wife were inspired by a Mr. Softee truck and began selling ice cream with the vision of something else.

“We looked around and said, ‘We have four kids. What are we going to do in the fall?” said Cohen. “We can’t keep selling ice cream. We found an empty store in Squirrel Hill. We talked to the landlord, and he liked us and it worked out. We went to New York (trade shows) and learned as much as we could.”

Cohen said he and Linda debated about opening up either a shoe store or a toy shop. The latter idea prevailed and they opened up their first shop in 1970.

“Toys seemed to be the one that would work, and it did work, thank God,” he said.

They opened up a second location in October of 1978, and continued to grow adding a Station Square store and Wild & Wooly, a stuffed animal store in Oxford Centre, Downtown.

At one point they had seven shops including a toy store, Alphabet Soup, and a glass store in PPG Place, Downtown, in the mid-1980s.

Their businesses were greatly affected when the steel mills closed during that decade.

Cohen said they put everything in their stores up for sale – including the shelves – in order to make it through those tough times.

“A lot of people lost their jobs and weren’t coming in,” Cohen said. “Those were tough years.”

The couple ended up closing Wild & Wooly and their PPG Place shops.

Their Station Square location closed in 2007 after 25 years when the shopping center where it was at lost traffic under new ownership.

The stores are named after the couple’s children. The “S” is for their daughters Sherry and Stacy. The “W” is for Wendy and Randall is their son’s middle name, James Randall Cohen. They also went with the old English spelling of toys and gifts.

“It sounded sophisticated and was good,” Cohen said. “We didn’t want to call it Jack’s Toy Box.”

Hollywood magic

The shop got a taste of Hollywood when it was featured in “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Director Christopher Nolan, actress Anne Hathaway (Catwoman) and nearly everyone except Batman himself (Christian Bale) checked out the toys during the summer of 2011.

Cohen said people can see the storefront in the movie’s climactic chase scene, where Batman hurtles his Bat aircraft down Smithfield Street, past Saks Fifth Avenue, Mellon Park and the Omni William Penn Hotel.

“People came from all over to catch a glimpse (of the action),” Cohen said. “They came in here. We were selling Batman stuff. All the characters were in. I have their pictures going up the steps. It was phenomenal. One of the best times ever.”

The Pittsburgh location is a little different than the other two shops in that it has more items like travel kits, small tools, gag gifts and Trump merchandise.

The Downtown store is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. The Shadyside and Squirrel Hill locations are open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays.

More information is available at swrandalltoys.com.