Founded by Jim and Mary Thornbury in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1954, Thornbury's Toys was initially a true "mom and pop" shop. After expanding a few times they outgrew the first store located at 117 Breckinridge Lane in St. Matthews and opened a new store nearby at 4101 Shelbyville Rd. in 1960. This store became headquarters. Thornbury's, incorporated in 1965, grew year after year, peaking in the mid 1980's with stores in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida, Ohio and Alabama. The formula for success: customer service, high "play-value" toys and bikes, and a strong management team combined with Uncle Jim's entrepreneurial and promotional flair, love of children, understanding of his customers, attention to detail, and loving family. Uncle Jim's motto was "the customer is always right". The company mascot, Thorny the monkey, who pedaled his bike day and night atop the St. Matthews store, also helped Thornbury's stand out.
The video above is an edition of Louisville Uncovered by Cyndy Tandy. It aired on WAVE3 in February 2015. In the video, the first picture of Thornbury's Toys was actually at 117 Breckenridge Lane and it opened in 1954. Then, in 1960, they moved to a new, much larger store on Shelbyville Road, which is also in the video. One more little note: Thorny was last spotted on top of Brundage Jewelers on Chenoweth Lane in the weeks before Christmas 2014 (see photo below, from here). Thanks WAVE3 and Cyndy for featuring Thorny and getting us motivated to tell the Thornbury's Toys story and sharing it with lots of people who have such fond memories of the toy store.
Found online here is a blog post written by a woman reminiscing about Thornbury's, including a Thorny stuffed animal, an appearance by Thorny at her birthday party, and more. Some excerpts:
Thorny was given to me before I turned a year old. Today my children play with him. Thorny is a monkey that brings back many memories when I look at him. When I was younger my Uncle ran a Toy Store known as Thornbury's Toys...My mom worked a couple of days a week in the office when I was between the ages of 2 and 9 years old. I can remember going there as a child and walking up and down the aisles of toys. I remember going to work with my mom some days...My sister worked at the store and she had a name badge made up for me. I would walk around with my name badge on and pretend that I worked in the store too. I would straighten up shelves and wait for some customer to ask me for help...I always thought it was so funny when we would drive past the store and the Thorny on his bike would be missing from the sign. People would steal him all of the time...It even got attention in the Courier Journal when he was taken. Usually he would turn up... Sure enough he would go right back up on that sign riding his bike...Today Thorny wears my old size 2T toy store shirt and jeans. His ears are starting to fall of and he is pretty ragged....but he is my Thorny. He is many fond and happy memories, and he reminds me to be thankful for the wonderful family that I have.
You know all the characters on the Thorny Bucks pictured here, don't you? On the bottom left, you have the one and only, Uncle Jim. His $10.00 Thornybuck was worth a nickel. Fireman Bill is on the $1.00 buck, Trigger Tom is on the $3.00 buck and Amy, the charming Queen of Toys out did them all on the $50.00 buck.
The main store at 4101 Shelbyville Road, Louisville, KY, ca. 1969
When Thornbury's Toys outgrew their original location at 117 Breckenridge Lane in St. Matthews, they moved to a brand new shopping area just a mile or so away at the busy corner of Shelbyville Road and Browns Lane. Toy sales quickly increased in the new store and so did the number of employees. There's Thorny the Monkey, Thornbury's famous mascot.
Skateboarding was very popular back in the mid 1970s, not unlike today. Skateboards and skateboard accessories and gear were popular selling items and Thornbury's was the leading local skateboard retailer. We believe the image above was for a coloring contest, another one of Uncle Jim's promotional ideas.
Thornbury's participated in a variety of skateboard-related promotions and activities, including competitions and demonstrations. At least once a professional skateboarder from California, who appeared frequently in popular skateboarding magazines of the day, traveled to Kentucky on behalf of Thornbury's for various store appearances and performances. Competitions held in mall parking lots, like the one shown in the video here, were common too. The video depicts those scenes well but it's not one of the Thornbury's stores or malls. If you have any Thornbury's-skateboarding-related photos, videos, or merchandise (we recall a t-shirt with a color version of the above image), contact us as we'd like to publish it here. Keep on truckin'.
Here is the Queen of Toys! She is one of many characters that appear on Thorny Bucks. Do you remember them? If you spent $1.00 at Thornbury's Toys, you would receive 2 Thorny Bucks. You could save them up and then buy a toy of your choice. The store also would feature "Thorny Buck Specials" so your Thorny dollar would buy more.
Above is a short --and rare-- video of Thorny. It was uploaded in 2009 to Youtube by "snackcake68" and titled "Thorny the Chimp 1970" and captioned "Birthday party for Thorny the Chimp at the Louisville Zoo, 1970. Thorny was the mascot for Thornberry's Toy Store." Some of the comments posted thus far on Youtube in response to the video are below:
Loney John Hutchins 4 years ago
Hi..... I've been trying to find ANY pictures or video of any mall that had a Thornberriys. So many early childhood memories. A photo of a Barrel of Fun would be amazing as well.
Campbell Evans 3 years ago in reply to Loney John Hutchins
Absolutely. Most of my childhood toys came from Thornberry's in the Turfland Mall, Lexington, KY. You know there must be lots of photos taken of places like that but they haven't been sorted on the internet yet. I wonder if they ever will.
mrsniallhoran628 2 years ago
My great grandpa is actually the owner and founder of Thornburys Toys, we have lots of pictures.
coldbowlofchili 2 years agoin reply to mrsniallhoran628
WOW! I have a friend, Don Noe, who tells us the stories where he dressed up as thorny! could you possibly send some photos of him to me! that would be GREAT! His Uncle owned the store???
coldbowlofchili 2 years ago
WOW! Don Noe our friend used to dress up as thorny! begging for photos or video!
Here's a photo of the main store in St. Matthews on Shelbyville Road from the University of Louisville Libraries Digital Collection/Photographic Archives. The photo was taken by Royal Photo Company in September 1969 (ULPA R 19409, Royal Photo Company Collection, 1982.03, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky). There's Thorny up there, riding his bike! Click the image to get a better view. The same photograph appeared in the The Voice of St. Matthews, below (date unknown):
