that is awesome

Wow.

that kid was funny OMG

Haha, Cool! They had a kangaroo mascot!

...What? ^^

That's hilarious!

Where was I when that was on TV? I must have been playing outside again.

JAWS

This is making fun of those parents who have no idea what game their child is asking for. It has to be. Like the time when I asked my mom to buy me F-Zero. I got Aquatic Games ( D: ) instead.

I want the game that goes "aaaaaahhhh~ <3 ecchi"

That is indeed quite awesome.

Awesome.

Ah, Kiddie City. I used to love that store over TRU.

The building it used to be in is now a PetSmart. Fail.

My parents always told me about us going to Kiddie City when I was younger, but I don't remember. I think a couple of them were replaced by Toys R Us.

GUTSMAN STAGE FTW!!!!!!!

And there's a whole wikipedia article about them:
[en.wikipedia.org]

Surely "frown turned upside down" has been used in other places...

lmao... Today's commercials are failures compared to those back in the days.

Dude... pause @ 0:20

i think this is the greatest commercial... ever.

@IntelSilver: Wow. That's right. They may be ultra-cheesy, but they were entertaining.
Nowadays, the commercials just make me want to mute my TV. Especially since they run the comercials at double the volume of the show, to make sure we get extra pissed off.

Bring Back Bayou Billy!

"I've no idea what Lionel Kiddie City is"

It's clearly another name for KB Toystores... that was their old thing (the Kangaroo turning the frown into a smile with nearly the same jingle).

personally, i just found it annoying. LOL.

I wish I could make noises like that... great commercial.

Brilliant!

@CZroe:
Lionel Kiddie City were stand-alone supermarket-sized toy stores. Kay-Bee (now K.B.) are smaller boutiques in malls.
Lionel was one of my first jobs as a teenager. I know they closed doors in the early 90's so i wouldn't be surprised if they were bought out by whomever runs K.B.

I don't even remember these commercials. KB's probably didn't exist in my city 20 years ago.

These noises are normal right? Cuz I typically make them in my every day life by just opening my mouth. Just saying.

Best... ad... ever!

seems like it was a chain run by the same company who made the toy trains (or model trains if you take the stuff seriously). I remember the commercial oddly enough. Oh and that kid's face is commendable. Oh and American Flyer trains were waaaaaay better.

What sucks is that back in the day those noises described about every game for those systems.

But im going to go on imdb and hunt for every single person in that commercial to see how far their star rose

I think I forgot what I learned in Biology for the past year thanks to this video...NO! EXIT EXAM IN A MONTH!

This commercial was ahead of it's time.

Kiddie City ruuuuuled. I was so bummed out when they closed. So much better than TRU.

I feel so old now

Wow.. That.. was amazing.

I was completely thrown by the "Kiddie City" name. In Florida, it was "Lionel Play World".

@Karoshi: I'm sure of it. I've seen the Kangaroos and the "Turn that frown upside down" jingle used in Kay Bee/KB Toys commercials when I was younger and I never once heard of a Lionel store (despite owning Lionel train sets and knowing of Lionel). Also, it could be a regional partnership. They may have allied with what remained "KB Toys" in the aftermath.

Chuck E Cheese was Showbiz Pizza in my region and I would see the EXACT same commercials overdubbed with the other name when I would visit family elsewhere.

3 decades of Video games, 80's, 90's, 00's(now)

And they went like this, Cheesy, Cheesy and weird, to just plain Weird and fucked up(00's) now days why the hell do I need a damn movie trailer for me to buy games? Seriously Im getting to like the Wii would like to play commercials.

lol that is EXACTLY what I do when I walk into a game store.

Wow, you guys are making me feel old. I loved this store as a kid, almost as much as I loved going to the Crazy Eddie in the same shopping plaza. Fast forward to to 2008, the difference is now I have a Game Stop and a Best Buy in the same mall, and now I don't have to beg my mom to buy me the latest games.

kiddy city was awesome just like Crazy Eddie

I bought my SNES from Kiddie City with money I saved up for 6 months before hand.

Well there goes my sleep tonight.

Coincidentally, the PCP consumption rate was at its highest the year this was made...

@Culebra: Wow, I remember that store and the same thing happened, it was converted into a pet smart.

Hmm, A store that actually help you find a game based on the sounds you heard while playing them? (actually they never helped the customers find the specific game) but has that ever happened to you where all you knew was a sound or obscure phase or even the left corner of the box? Obviously, I mean evenyone's been through that before.... Great commercial by the way :)

I miss Kiddie City. I have fond memories of buying Atari 2600 games there :(

@The_Rabbit: "Hmm, Interesting if true" ~Rich Little's head, Impersonating a sport's commentator

Kiddie City vs. Gamestop, no f*cking contest, and this ad proves it

I remember that place! But the ones we had were called Lionel Play World not Kiddie City. I remember shopping in them throughout the 80s but... They just suddenly vanished. And judging by the NES Power Pad in the background, I'm guessing this commercial is from about 1990.

I recognized the name "Lionel" not from a store, but from model trains and railroads. And suddenly I feel about 97 years old.

Heheh, cool, I remember that ad. I'll just crawl back into my coffin now.

I remember going there to buy Atari games after the market crashed. And I could actually afford them, even as a small child, since they were $1-5 each. Then I got a NES and only got like 2 games a year. :(

I've suddenly developed an insatiable hankering to buy an NES. Direct me to the nearest toy store.

@Sloopydrew: That's wat the majority of people, including myself, know of them as. I got my Lionel trains in the '80s and '90s, but there was no active Lionel toy store and there was no advertising in my area.

It's funny to see people realize that I've never seen a Jack-in-the-Box or Carl's Jr commercial on television in Georgia on broadcast, cable, or sat (though I got the same Carl's Jr ads as "Hardee's" ads). Advertisers are just very good at not wasting dollars on markets where they have no presence. I went to San Diego in '94 and it was all about "POGs." No one had heard of them in the South East and the only one that advertised on TV was "Tonks" which had come and gone years earlier (kinda like sports-card POGs). A year later, POGs and POG makers were advertised all over in the SE states, but they never got like CA (every gift shop had POGs, slammers, POG storage tubes, etc; every restaraunt or TV station promo involved POGs, even their local McDonalds').

At first, I was convinced that this was a different Lionel (none of my Lionel documentation and train catalogs ever mentioned a toystore), so most of us weren't making the connection and/or never heard of the toystore.

I used to go to one of those all the time when I visited my grandmother in Colombia, SC.

You brought it way back... waaaaay back into time

haha wow...that was way too amazing

From what I gather, both kids wanted Mega Man 2.
Not unreasonable.

The second kid was actually able to hit targets, but the first was just a shooting sound effect.

I want a game that goes om nom nom nom

Lionel! Wow, that takes me back. Awesome.

WOW talk about taking it way back, kiddie city, they went out of business cuz toys r' us and kb toys were murdering them with cheaper prices. but if you were a die hard SNK/NEOGEO fanboy that was one of the two places to buy it. the other was macy's lol

That commercial was cool.

But, what I hate are people who think video games STILL make sounds like that -_-

Oh yeah! Jaws! That's what that sound is from! Man I remember the panic of trying to fire 1000 of those little pellets before he got you.... Is the gun sound Contra?

@NESv1: I know what you mean. TV shows and movies are stuck in a time warp. They also think playing a game requires spaz hands and pressing every button every millisecond.

Dig the Atari XEGS on the counter. Hot seller.

@CZroe:

Yep, no Jack in the Box or Carl's Jr. in Minnesota, either. We do get Hardee's, though, which is the same thing (I found that out when I was dating a girl from California and she tried Hardee's for her first time and said, "This is Carl's Jr.!"). I think some of the stuff we get that doesn't show up on the coasts would be Culver's, Godfather's Pizza, Little Ceaser's, White Castle Hamburgers, Davanni's Pizza and ... well ... I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty.

NICE

Ahh, Lionel Kiddie City. How I miss that place. I actually bought my copy of Atari 2600 ET there. Please don't shoot me. I was young and stupid.

At least now I have a ancient piece of crap^H^H^H^Hvideo game history.

@Sloopydrew: Actually, I'm on the East Coast and we have Little Ceaser's and we USED to have Godfather's Pizza but they disappeared in the mid 80s from here. No White Castles here but their frozen burgers are everywhere down here. You what chain'