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понедельник, 21 мая 2012 г.

 

What can you buy in the Hamleys in London?


Hamleys is one of the world's largest toy shops. Its flagship store in Regent Street, London, is the world's largest toy store. Other major stores worldwide include Dublin,[1] Dubai,[2] Amman,[3] Glasgow, Mumbai, Chennai and Riyadh.
The flagship store is considered one of London's major tourist attractions, and receives about five million visitors a year. It is often considered to be the London equivalent of FAO Schwarz in New York City.
Unlike many companies using possessive names, Hamleys intentionally forgoes the use of an apostrophe in its name.


Hamleys is named after William Hamley, who founded a toy shop called "Noah's Ark" at 231 High Holborn in London in 1760. A branch at 200 Regent Street was opened in 1881, and the Holborn branch was destroyed by fire in 1901 and was relocated from 231 to 86– 87 High Holborn.[5]
In 1938, Queen Mary, the consort of King George V, gave Hamleys a royal warrant. During World War II, the Regent Street store was bombed five times. In 1955, Queen Elizabeth II gave the company a second royal warrant as a "toys and sports merchant".
Hamleys moved its flagship store to its current address at 188–196 Regent Street in 1981, which is the largest toy shop in the world.
Hamleys flagship London store has seven floors covering 54,000 square feet (5,000 m2),[6] all devoted to playthings, with different categories of toy on each floor. In the late 1990s, Hamleys opened a specific Spice Girls department, dedicating their aisles to everything from Spice Girls stationery to Spice Girls dolls. The ground floor is traditionally for soft toys (including Steiff), and decked out with a remarkably diverse array of stuffed animals, from regular teddy bears to more exotic plushes such as turtles and dolphins, even to enormous life-sized giraffes and elephants.
  • 5th floor: Boys — Action figures, vehicles, and an open cafe.
  • 4th floor: Hobbies — Model kits, remote-controlled vehicles, model railways, Scalextric, etc.
  • 3rd floor: Girls — Dolls, Arts & Crafts, Hello Kitty, Dress up etc.
  • 2nd floor: Preschool — Toys for young children.
  • 1st floor: Games — Board games, science, jigsaws; also a Build-A-Bear Workshop and Sweet Shop.
  • Ground floor: Soft toys — a wide variety of stuffed animals, and also a Marvin's Magic section.
  • Basement: InteractiveLego, construction toys, Red 5, novelties and GAME (retailer).



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