Trying to add a payment method? You can do this on the 
Overview:
Brothers Mark and Alan Agerter are the last members of their family to run the downtown toy and hobby store, which opened in 1933 and has now sold to the owners of Radar Toys and Elephant’s Trunk.
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.
“To let it go in somebody else’s hands was tough,” Alan Agerter said of Goosmann. “But I’m confident in his abilities to keep it going. That’s a comfort.”
A family business
The enterprise began with Mark and Alan’s great-grandfather, Perry Agerter. Perry retired from working on the railroad in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and moved to Eugene in the late 1920s. He bought Magazine Exchange, a store that sold cigars, combs and knickknacks in addition to its anchor magazine exchange business.
Perry invited his sons to come out to take over the store. Mark and Alan’s grandfather, Byron, was an out-of-work truck driver in Dust Bowl-era Kansas. He took his father up on the offer, moving to Eugene with his wife, Eva, and son Paul, Mark and Alan’s father. The inventory grew to include pocket novels, toys and more, rebranding as Eugene Toy & Hobby in 1933.
But growing up in a small toy and hobby shop wasn’t a childhood wonderland. It was hard work, especially before the store expanded in the latter half of the 20th century. The brothers grew up working in the store, even around the holidays. That rush was always vital to build up capital for the next year, so the brothers worked from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas in the store with their parents.
Being a smaller store, especially during the advent of e-commerce and big box stores like Walmart, has its perks. For one, the larger stores stocking up on hot inventory made it hard to get in the fight for things like Cabbage Patch dolls. Upon visiting a Portland toy wholesaler, Mark and Alan realized being elbowed out meant they didn’t have to deal with warehouses of once-trendy inventory that had gone out of fashion.
Toys and games with proven staying power like Barbies and GI Joes instead meant consistency. RC cars boomed as a hobby in the late 1980s, creating another still-popular inventory category.
Mark is the hobby-oriented brother and retired at the end of 2019, while Alan gravitated toward the toy department and retired in 2024.
Mark, a model train enthusiast, still pops into the store for supplies for his own projects and for his grandchildren. Being a multi-generation family business means that the “family” feeling goes beyond people with the last name “Agerter.”
“We have customers that are in their third and fourth generation of coming in,” Mark said. “This guy may be standing in front of you, but I knew his dad. I knew his mom, I knew his grandpa. For me, the saddest and hardest thing about being retired is I don’t see those people.”
Keeping things consistent
This isn’t the first time Radar Toys has stepped in to purchase a Eugene toy business to keep it open. When Carol McCornack wanted to retire from running her Elephant’s Trunk stores, Radar Toys bought the business. It now operates the store’s two locations in Eugene, in addition to two Radar Toys locations and now Eugene Toy & Hobby.
Goosmann, who said he’s kept both Elephant’s Trunk and Eugene Toy & Hobby consistent since the sales, said the point isn’t to overhaul a legacy brand. Goosmann said the only alterations to the store will be updating some older technology behind the counter and fixing up the building itself.
“Going in there and drastically changing something wouldn’t help anybody,” Goosmann said. “That defeats the purpose of purchasing a 92-year-old business.”
For the Agerters, Goosmann’s plan to keep things largely consistent was reassuring.
“He appreciates the effort and sweat and blood that we put into it, our family put into it,” Mark Agerter said. “He wanted to honor that by maintaining as much of the same character and style of doing business as possible.”
If you go
Eugene Toy & Hobby is located in downtown Eugene, at 32 E.11th Ave.
The store is open every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
