{"id":15858,"date":"2014-03-18T06:42:43","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T11:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/?p=15858"},"modified":"2019-11-26T06:46:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T11:46:58","slug":"the-greatest-store-that-ever-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2014\/03\/18\/the-greatest-store-that-ever-was\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Store That Ever Was"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rocketship-and-accessories\"<\/a>I was digging through a dusty 4-drawer filing cabinet in my studio when I came upon this catalog for a sadly gone but not forgotten store\u00a0 — Rocketships & Accessories!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rocketships & Accessories used to be on 623-625 South Fourth Street just off of South Street back when Philadelphia’s hippest street in town was a genuinely interesting place to venture down. Long before the ability to find virtually anything for sale on the internet, South Street was the place to go to find a truly unique gift. It was best not to know what you were looking for because you would know it when you saw it.<\/p>\n

\"zx-271\"<\/a>I’m not sure who introduced me to the shop. I’m sure it was probably one of the men of DUCKWORK<\/a> who similarly made me aware of Fat Jack’s Comic Crypt<\/a>. Unlike Fat Jack’s which was crammed into a shop the size of a walk-in closet, Rocketships & Accessories was huge. I remember it being on a couple of floors. One of the floors was a museum dedicated to vintage tin ray guns.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4193\"<\/a>The other floor was a store that sold all sorts of science fiction related toys and collectibles. Of course, they had Star Wars<\/em> and Star Trek<\/em> merchandise, but what was really interesting was the imported toys. They had Italian toys like the pistol pictured above, and they carried Japanese transforming robots and mecha<\/em> well before Hasbro<\/em> unleashed their daily animated infomercials for toys.<\/p>\n

\"SUPERPISTOLA\"<\/a>As I said, Rocketships & Accessories<\/strong><\/em> was my go-to store for gifts until it one day vanished. The store kept odd hours when it was open and did mainly mail-order. As the rents started to sky-rocket on South Street, little curio shops like this couldn’t hang on. A lot of this stuff can probably be found on the internet, but there was nothing like being surrounded by toys and cool stuff that you never knew existed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was digging through a dusty 4-drawer filing cabinet in my studio when I came upon this catalog for a sadly gone but not forgotten store\u00a0 — Rocketships & Accessories!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,2714,120],"tags":[33,8,354,3669,1187,195,2920,1042,336],"class_list":["post-15858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blast-from-the-past","category-collecting-2","category-curious-clutter","tag-1980s","tag-cartoons","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-robots","tag-science-fiction","tag-south-street","tag-toys","tag-vintage"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1ed1x-47M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":33174,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2019\/12\/23\/the-miracle-on-south-13th-street\/","url_meta":{"origin":15858,"position":0},"title":"The Miracle on South 13th Street","author":"Tina Garceau","date":"December 23, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The neighbors on South 13th Street in South Philly do Christmas right! 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