Tell Me About Your Childhood

“Toys in the attic” was a polite but suggestive phrase, a half-century ago, for a kind of psychological malady in which the adult patient retained child-like qualities.

(Okay, Steven Tyler fans, it was also the title of a 1975 Aerosmith song and album.)

That phrase brings a powerful dimension to retailing these days. Because not in a long time, it seems, has the retail world suffered from such uncertainty, anxiety, depression, paranoia and schizophrenia as it did this most recent holiday season. And some of that paranoia centered around toys and toy retailing.

So pull up a couch and let's analyze your nightmares.

Any looming Christmas selling season is always a neurotic time for retail. But as Christmas 2003 approached, we seemed to be even nuttier than usual. And the picture changed more quickly than your average Britney Spears marriage.

First came month after month in which the gloomy economy seemed to be tanking and pulling retail down with it. Then the August and September back-to-school figures began to come in. And they were actually – yes, you can say it! – very good, particularly for some of those high-end rollers who had been spending the new millennium staring fondly at old 1999 ledger books. Neiman Marcus, Kenneth Cole, Federated, Coach, Tiffany's, Burberry, even Barneys. The Gap was pulling its chin up off the floor. Nordstrom, too.

“The high-end buyer is back,” proclaimed respected retail analyst Dana Telsey at Bear Stearns. The National Retail Federation predicted a soaring 5.7 percent sales increase for the holiday selling season.

The media reported on Black Friday, and that entire first weekend after Thanksgiving, as if it were V-E Day – crowded malls, bustling store aisles, ringing registers, sailors kissing young girls in Times Square.

And then, in December, reality hit – and in the most unexpected of places. The toy store.

First, FAO Inc. declared bankruptcy – for the second time. Then KB Toys acknowledged that it might be heading for a similar destiny. I mean, it's Christmas we're talking about. If toy retailers can't get the sales boosts they need at Christmastime, when can they?

And sure enough, the retail reports began backing off, from hooh-hah to ho-hum. Yeah, well, the malls hadn't been that crowded. And the storm in the Northeast wiped out a critical selling weekend, maybe two. And weren't we short one selling weekend to begin with? And shoppers were still looking only for markdowns. Or going online.

So it ended up neither “disastrous” nor “dismal.” But at 3-3.5 percent, more “boring” than “soaring.”

Some retailers surprised (Neiman Marcus, J.C. Penney, Limited Brands, Nordstrom, Ann Taylor); others disappointed (The Gap, Sears, Kohl's, Wal-Mart). Cashmere sweaters, 18-k gold watches and Bath & Body Works' $25 Fig candles flew off the shelves. So did deeply discounted consumer electronics. There seemed to be no one pattern to cling to.

As for the toy retailers, there was no Tickle Me Elmo blockbuster this year, and no big movie tie-in. The cat in the hat and the hulk both disappointed. “Lord of the Rings” opened too late to give the season any bounce. Besides, most of its aficionados were in Best Buy and Circuit City, buying Xbox. Or in Wal-Mart, whose share of the toy market is now upwards of 21 percent.

Even Barbie gave up some of her high ground, to something called Bratz.

Yes, doctor, it was that kind of year.