{"id":1475,"date":"2026-08-15T07:36:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T07:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1475"},"modified":"2026-08-15T07:36:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T07:36:54","slug":"toy-story-5-and-the-vanishing-america-of-toy-stores-and-churches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1475","title":{"rendered":"Toy Story 5<\/i> and the Vanishing America of Toy Stores and Churches"},"content":{"rendered":"
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L<\/span>ast weekend I sat in a theater with my youngest son to see the latest offering in the Toy Story<\/em> \u201cfranchise.\u201d That would be Toy Story 5<\/em>. I\u2019m not big on sequels. Obviously, the filmmakers cash in on the name and success of the first movie in the series, and few to none that follow are better or comparable. Nonetheless, they insist on producing one after another as film becomes farce.<\/p>\n

Read more The Problem of Gratuitous Beauty, in The Story of Everything<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, my son wanted to see the movie, and I read reviews suggesting it was actually pretty good and not loaded with Hollywood\u2019s normal boatload of degeneracy to indoctrinate your child.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the movie carries an impressive and rather remarkable message \u2014 about screens. More so, about our fixation, obsession, addiction to screens, whether our laptop, phone, or \u201cpad\u201d of some sort. And ironically, if not audaciously, the Toy Story 5<\/em> filmmakers had the courage to deliver that message to us \u2014 kids and adults alike \u2014 on a big screen. And with toys no less!<\/p>\n

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How symptomatic of modern America. Once upon a time, the first public thing the community built was a church.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The movie begins with a nine-year-old girl named \u201cBonnie\u201d who loves to play with toys. In that sense, the cute little thing is kind of a modern dinosaur. In fact, she\u2019s treated like an ogre by neighborhood kids who snicker when she shyly tries to get them to play by waving with her toy, Jesse the Cowgirl. The boy and girl next door chuckle at the pathetic little fool and retreat into their house with their coveted devices. We\u2019re soon treated to a nighttime view of the whole neighborhood, where we see kids in every home glued to their gizmos like zombies.<\/p>\n

Worse, Bonnie\u2019s parents, saddened by their child\u2019s inability to make friends, make a desperate decision. Mom and dad go native. They put their fingers to the wind and blow with the zeitgeist. They join the masses. They sell out. They go online and order Bonnie a \u201cLilypad.\u201d Soon enough, Bonnie is sucked into her device and \u2014 bam, presto \u2014 that girl is gone, as are her toys. She doesn\u2019t play with them anymore.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s much I could say about this in an extended cultural-social analysis, which I\u2019m doing in a review for another publication, but something else struck me that I think is worth sharing with readers here.<\/p>\n

Ironically, after we left the theater, my son and I drove by a plaza that once had a Toys R Us store, which sold toys like Jesse the Cowgirl. I told my son about the store, which shut down about a decade ago. My older son in the back seat chimed in, reminiscing about what a cool store that was. We would stroll in for an hour or so, as he and his siblings lost themselves in play amid the shelves and aisles.<\/p>\n

Well, that store is gone. Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors in June 2018. There were many reasons for that (it was pre-COVID), some of which the store acknowledged and others it didn\u2019t. I would point to a culprit underscored in Toy Story 5<\/em>: kids have shifted from playing with toys to thumbing electronics. Indeed, just two stores away, the local Best Buy is thriving, packed with youngsters buying devices.<\/p>\n

I must also add that Toys R Us faced a major demographic hurdle. Americans are finally catching up with secular Europeans in that they\u2019re not getting married or getting married too late to procreate. If they do have children, it\u2019s one or two. A three-child family is considered a big family nowadays.<\/p>\n

We in academia have been watching and waiting for this bubble to burst. It\u2019s popping right now, the mid-2020s. It has meant a massive decline in college students, which has been catastrophic for enrollments. Many colleges are shutting down. Over the past decade,\u00a0500-plus U.S. private colleges\u00a0have closed, three times the rate of the previous decade.<\/p>\n

Current college-age students were kids in the 2010s, when Toys R Us was losing clients.<\/p>\n

And it isn\u2019t just Toys R Us, of course. Think about it: Whatever happened to your small-town toy store? In Butler, we had Aland\u2019s Toyland on Main Street, forever. We would flock there as wide-eyed little creatures in the early 1970s and marvel at the gems.<\/p>\n

Read more The Spectacle Ep. 454: Who\u2019s Your Favorite DSA Moron? Zohran Mamdani, Francesca Hong, Megan Romano, AOC\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Think of the opening scene in the wonderful movie A Christmas Story<\/em>, where Ralphie and friends press their cold noses against the snowy window of the toy store watching the trains circle. Today, kids don\u2019t have toy trains. They would rather \u201coperate\u201d one on a computer screen.<\/p>\n

A Christmas Story<\/em> is set in 1940s America, when moms and dads had lots of kids. A big family had 10 kids. Kids were everywhere, and thus the demand for toy stores (and no competing demand from cellphones and laptops).<\/p>\n

All of which brings me to a sadder cultural observation: What else is gone, and what has replaced it?<\/p>\n

Our idyllic downtowns, many of them Norman Rockwell-esque images \u2014 lined with hardware stores, malt shops, the Elk\u2019s, the VFW \u2014 are now pockmarked by paragons of ugliness such as tattoo joints and vape shops. Vape shops have become so prolific that the likes of Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O\u2019Connor just signed a zoning ordinance restricting them. One really does have to wonder how many of the damned things the market can sustain. How are they all staying in business? What are they selling?<\/p>\n

And what else isn\u2019t being built downtown anymore? How about churches? Oh, they\u2019re there, but they were erected a century ago and now stand conspicuous for their empty pews, or they\u2019re being closed or converted into something else. One ornate old church that I drive by in Pittsburgh was turned into a beer pub. In Europe, many have become mosques. In our town of Grove City, the former Catholic church (we built a new one outside of town about 20 years ago) is up for sale because of the small Sunday attendance at the local denomination that bought the church. The sale price is cheaper than most new \u201cgated community\u201d houses, but finding a buyer (i.e., another church congregation) is going to be very difficult.<\/p>\n

That reminds me of another church situation that\u2019s culturally revealing.<\/p>\n

Our family recently had a stayover in Washington, D.C. en route to a beach vacation on the East Coast. I\u2019m in the area often as editor of The American Spectator<\/em>, though I stay at hotels near our office in historic Old Town Alexandria, which is safe and nice. I avoid D.C. like the plague.<\/p>\n

If my family is with me, we usually stay in Alexandria, where we attend St. Mary\u2019s Basilica for Mass. But this time, our regular hotels were booked. So instead, we stayed at National Harbor, a lively new town constructed along the Potomac. Lots of entertainment \u2014 restaurants, piers, paths, waterfront, boutiques, coffee shops \u2026 but minus something else. What else?<\/p>\n

Yes, a church.<\/p>\n

That reality hit as one of the kids asked whether we would be attending daily Mass the next morning at National Harbor \u2014 walking down the street to the nearest parish like we do in Alexandria. No<\/em>, it dawned on me, because this new town has no church.<\/p>\n

How symptomatic of modern America. Once upon a time, the first public thing the community built was a church. When the immigrants settled the village, they eyed up sites for places of worship. Moreover, in those days, folks from the old country had real skills. Men knew how to work with their hands. Little chapels in little towns were so architecturally impressive and pretty inside because parishioners included bricklayers and stonemasons. Catholic churches featured stained glass, marble, columns, lofts, artwork, and statues because immigrants from Italy and Ireland and Germany knew how to do that stuff.<\/p>\n

Today, the folks in the pews can\u2019t do that kind of work (me included).<\/p>\n

But that aside, it says something that a new community like a National Harbor is filled with coffee shops and bars but not a single church. It\u2019s a testimony to what we value \u2014 our priorities. In today\u2019s post-Christendom America, it\u2019s not a chapel but a Starbucks. Or a vape shop or some ridiculous \u201cbody art\u201d bunkum.<\/p>\n

A sign of the times.<\/p>\n

All of this, from my musings on missing toy stores to churches, isn\u2019t just some nostalgia, I\u2019m afraid. It\u2019s yet another sad testimony to cultural decline.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Ceasefire Trap: Iran, Gaza, and the Politics of Peace<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE from Paul Kengor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

How Anthony Fauci and the 1980s AIDS Scare Shaped Public Fear<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meet America\u2019s New Un-Americans\u2026 the DSA<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard Payne and the Lost Art of the Sacred Voice<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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