Over the years, I purchased many birthday and holiday gifts in your sweet little shop. I appreciated your gift wrapping service and knowledgeable staff who could always help me find the perfect gifts to delight each individual child.

Thank you...best wishes in your retirement.

I will miss going to the store with my son. He is 11 and still likes to go there to discover what's new. I was trying to buy gifts there or at Grey Matter, if possible.

I will also miss you!

Purchased fun puzzles and gifts for the new members of my extended family. The gift wrapping was great.

What do parents do these days? My kid is grown up but when she was little we had the Palo Alto toy and Sports shop, the art store, bought many a birthday gift there.

Have norms changed and maybe now people don't have parties or have to take gifts, are gift cards the replacement?

Kids are being raised on technology for fun and for babysitting. And it's more bang for the buck.

Those kiddie toys don't have staying power, they get boring fast. We lived in the Midwest and money grew on trees for us. I'd buy all these toys and they'd get tired of them within a week. The only ones that had staying power were the inflatable jump house and the electric Cadillac car, so buy those if you want a good gift. My kids are grown up and they would still use them if they could.

As rents go up, for both stores and employee housing, more and more small businesses like this are closing.

Oh No, norms haven't changed, we just go to the big toy sections in Target or Walmart instead. Or if we're looking for something specific, Amazon or Ebay.

This announcement makes me so sad! Every once in awhile, I'd say to myself, "At least Ambassador toys is still around". And soon it won't be.

My father, who is retired and barely wants to leave the house these days, always looked forward to going there with me around the holidays to shop for his grandkids. Seeing him in that store has been a highlight of my Christmas for a while now, it's like he regresses to his youth and he finds everything magical. We will miss you terribly but are happy for you to begin a new journey.

Toy shops are great but perhaps a thing of the past given these modern times.

My eight-year old brat asked for an iPhone 11 for his birthday.

When I pointed to a rusty lawnmower in the garage & suggested he start earning towards one, the kid then asked me for a Samsung Galaxy S10 figuring I'd get suckered in by getting him a costly Android instead.

Time to move out of the SF bay area.

You can still buy Creey Crawlers 1960 version or the newer 1970 version online on eBay. They have plenty of plasti-goop available as well.
It's amazing I'm still alive breathing so much of the plasti-goop cooking in my bedroom, but I had some great critters.
I'm a biologist now, with an advanced degree in biochemistry.
I've probably breathed in more zylene, toluene, benzene, and formaldehyde, before I reached age 21 while working for college chemistry departments preparing solutions for their labs (saving for college), and also at Alza off shoot companies.
I'm over 60 and still ticking - no medical problems my entire life.
Fingers crossed.
Parents seemed overly protective of their kids getting getting burned, exposed to chemicals, etc. We all get burned at some point in the learning process, but hey, I'm a both a good cook and a scientist as well. I attribute this to being allowed to experiment and create things (creepy or delicious).
It's part of learning.
Frankly, I think the cell phones are far more damaging.

Adventure Toys in downtown Los Altos is great and like Ambassador, carries unique products

Super sad to hear about this loss. I worked for a toy/book company for years going to Toy fairs in Germany and Japan. I loved my time in Germany sourcing quality products for my company. Target does not carry the quality toys that Ambassador Toys did. Either does Amazon!!

The toy sections at Target and Walmart kind of suck. The crazy thing is, they aren’t even really cheap a lot of the time. I’ve bought things at Ambassador toys that were unique, interesting, and competitively priced. Not everything, but a lot of their stuff. I’ve gone to Target, and left disgusted by the high price of certain toys. Or by the poor quality.

At ambassador toys, the toys are also curated. You can look at them in a welcoming environment.And then there was the free gift wrapping.

Sure seems to me that with individual things mailed to people one at a time in boxes with lots of packaging, we lose the opportunity to pick something up on the way to somewhere else. I even once ran into Steve Jobs himself at Palo Alto sport and toy, where he had walked to get something for his kid. It’s way easier to return to a physical location for larger stuff and clothing.

I think at some point, we’re going to have to get serious about ensuring that cities can own the land underneath retail areas, similar to the way that Stanford owns the land under its surrounding neighborhoods. It’s the only way Stanford can attract the faculty to neighborhoods that look like they would in the Midwest. The faculty can still own the houses, but they’re considerably below market and affordable.

Owning the land is the only way that cities can still have city halls, school districts offices, schools, and community centers. We’re going to have to start considering retail districts the same way.

It’s not environmentally friendly for people having to have to drive all over kingdom come to find stuff. The Internet is not an adequate substitute. There is a needle in the haystack aspect to finding stuff on the Internet, but browsing and comparing in a curated in person situation, such as looking for baby products at a baby store, isn’t the same.

I still miss many retail establishments in Palo Alto that immeasurably contributed to my quality-of-life and work. There is no Internet substitute for the pro side of Keeble and Shuchat, and the easy pick up and drop off of rental lenses. There’s no Internet substitute for shoe shopping in person. Period. Or browsing for art supplies that you’re not exactly sure even exist.

I’m not saying it isn’t great being able to find things that it doesn’t make sense to sell locally on the Internet. I just found water hardness measuring paper strips, really cheap, on the Internet last night. I would never want to bet on finding those at any given hardware store. But I also no longer have a place to compare and find sale memory chips or last minute anything like at Frys.I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but often the selection at Amazon is not what it’s cracked up to be, maybe because of how badly they treat their sellers I don’t know.

I know it’s been said a lot, but if the cities could own the land, then small businesses could be insulated from the escalating costs, and afford to pay their workers competitive wages. Cities could make it more possible for resident-serving small businesses to own rather than rent the locations, to prevent abuse/loss of retail areas such as by Palantir, and ensure all traditionally low-wage workers get better pay and the businesses more stable workforce. This gets more and more valuable to cities over time without costing more.

I will miss Ambassador toys.

Never thought that a toy store would need justification,
I wouldn’t go to Target for special gifts anymore than I’d only shop Amazon for books or stop going to Yosemite because I can see it online. I have great memories of the gifts I found at Ambassador toys (that my nieces or friends wouldn’t find at Target). Great story about gentleman shopping for his grandchildren. Also about toy buyer selecting unique items at toy fairs.

It is definitely environmentally better to have something in town both to avert driving to other cities to find gifts and to cut down on Amazon packaging/shipping which is not green at all.