Vintage Toys Galore at Lulu Berlu, Paris
with Mr. Stinkhead
Before travelling to France, I researched online different toy stores that I could visit while in the land of chicks and wine. The one that people repeatedly told me to check out was Lulu Berlu. They specialize in vintage toys, and the presentation is much like a museum. My wife, the Princess of Power, and I were reduced to gawking, drooling children by the time we left. Display case after display case were stuffed to the gills with vintage toys from the 70s-90s all in mint condition. Many of them were in mint packages. Now the prices were up there, but in France, these are imports on top of being collector items.
Instead of going all nuts, talking about everything, I'm just going to present these photos for you to pour over. I've kept them at 1280 X 960 so you can see pretty much everything I did while I was there. So if you're on dial-up, the big versions may take a second to load. I've included our standard 600 X 450 format so you can breeze through easier if you don't have the time, but man, are you missing a bunch.
So the one story I'll tell you is that I e-mailed with Lulu Berlu ahead of time (they speak quite decent English) and specifically asked about the possibility of them having the Bat Signal Batman I was looking for. I also asked if there were any American toys they needed. So I went out and bought some two-packs of 3¾" GI Joes. (One with Baroness, one with Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow). When I went out to buy these, P.O.P. nagged me and said "don't go buying more toys to bring to France!" And then when we were packing the night before she says "you don't need a suitcase that big, stop packing toys to bring to France." Then when we get there, and at each stop I'm checking to make sure the packaging is in good shape "Quit messing with those toys!"
So we finally get to Lulu Berlu and we discuss a trade. They had a lot of cool stuff, but nothing I was pining for (within my budget and not wanting to take out a business cash advance) but they did have She-Ra figures that P.O.P. desparately wanted. After some coniving on her part, she used the Joes to trade for a vintage She-Ra Cattra figure, and then proceeds to get "upset" and yell at me for not bringing more Joes. Why I tell ya....
So I spent about a half hour drooling over everything and taking pictures. Take your time... and come back later this week for my detailed expose on how a toy-collectin' guy like me survives in Paris.
If you see something here that you've been dying to get or want to know more about what the store has, you can visit Lulu-Berlu.com, as they now have online ordering, and they do ship to the US. And if you dig gazing over pics of old vintage toys, check out the time Lando and I visited the Toy and Train Museum in Wheeling WV.