Hard at play

No “Do not touch” signs hang from the 7-foot grizzly just inside the doorway at Figpickles Toy Emporium, reflecting owner Susan Sommer’s pet peeve about toy stores where you can’t try out the merchandise.

Kids and adults alike are welcome to sink their fingers into the plush fur of the grizzly, priced at $825. They can also play games, shoot off “boinks” in the store, or ride an antique carousel.

“I can’t stand toy stores where you can’t touch anything,” Sommer said. “How do you know if you would play with it, if you can’t touch it first?”

Since the Coeur d’Alene toy store opened last week at 312 Sherman Ave., plenty of curious kids and adults have obliged. Figpickles’ carries an array of wooden and nostalgic toys, including many that boomers will remember from their childhoods. The merchandise runs the gamut from 75 cent boinks — a springy tube that shoots off like a rocket — to a $5,000 carved wooden rocking horse with real horsehair.

Sommer spent a year researching product lines, gleaning ideas from toy shows in New York, Germany and London. The store carries wooden trains made in Vermont, hand-stitched teddy bears, and skittles games produced at an arts-and-crafts college in Kentucky.

Sommer’s own childhood favorite is also on the shelves. “Old Million Face” is a puzzle whose wooden blocks rearrange into hundreds of different facial features.

“I wanted to offer an alternative to electronic games,” she said. “I wanted stuff that wouldn’t break the next day — toys that would become family heirlooms.”

Figpickles is Sommer’s first retail experience. She and her husband, Brett, and the couple’s two teenage sons relocated to Coeur d’Alene in 2004. It was an impulse move for the family, former residents of a New Jersey suburb of New York City.

“After 9/11, New York was a very different place,” Sommer said. Six weeks after the family visited Coeur d’Alene, they were making plans for a cross-country move.

The Sommers bought a 95-year-old brick pharmacy in Coeur d’Alene’s downtown. They planned to live in a 3,000-square-foot apartment upstairs and rent out the ground-floor shop. But the rental applicants were duplicating what downtown already offered. Sommer rejected proposals for women’s dress shops and art galleries. She decided to try her hand at a toy store.

Running a retail shop was a departure from the family’s plans. In Manhattan, Brett Sommer was president of Music Art Technologies Inc., an electronic music design company. The firm produced “virtual orchestras” from synthesizers for more than 100 productions, including the Lion King, Sommer said.

“We both came out here to do nothing,” a chuckling Brett Sommer said Monday. Now, he’s the guy ringing up sales at Figpickles, and mopping up puddles from the wooden floor.

The couple’s sons — 18-year-old Devon and 15-year-old Austin — also work in the store. They’re getting practical life experience, and honing their customer service skills, Susan Sommer said. She defers to their opinion on products.

“I’m still a kid myself,” Austin said. “We can show the customers how things work.”

The 2,000-square-foot store almost didn’t open in time for Christmas. Since the Sommers are still sorting out code issues with their contractor, the city of Coeur d’Alene issued them a temporary permit, Susan Sommer said. Figpickles will close briefly after the holidays for additional construction.

Customer Judith Paniagua has been watching the sign in the window, waiting for the toy store to open. “We’ve needed something like this for years,” she said.

Paniagua, who collects antique toys and replicas, exclaimed over doll tea sets Monday, and picked out a set of toy enamel pots similar to the ones she played with as a kid. She shooed her 18-year-old twins out of the store, so she could buy presents for them.

Her friend, Terry Peterson, was shopping for an older crowd. She tried out different games of strategy, searching for one her husband would like.

“I see a lot of things I could buy for him,” she said.