After more than 90 years in the hands of one family, the long-standing downtown business Eugene Toy & Hobby quietly sold in March of this year. It is now owned and operated by local business Radar Toys and its owner, Richard Goosmann.
The store, on 11th Avenue between Oak and Willamette streets, sells supplies for model train sets and radio-controlled cars as well as popular toys and puzzles. Its expansion over the years gave the Agerter family a front-row seat to nine decades of change in the industry.
Mark and Alan Agerter, brothers who grew up in Eugene Toy & Hobby and ran it for decades before retiring, said the next generation of the Agerter family didn’t express interest in running the store. The options were to liquidate the business or to find a buyer. (The Agerter family still owns the building and land, but sold the business itself.)
The era of family ownership ending is bittersweet, they said. But making the sale to a toy store owner in Eugene instead of liquidating was heartening…