Big Fun leaves customers smiling
If you grew up anytime from the 1950’s through the 1980’s, stepping through the doors of Big Fun on Coventry Road will instantly whisk you back to your childhood. The store features a vast array of toys, board games, dolls, action figures, comic books, gag gifts, and other memorabilia from those decades. “For most people, childhood was a happy time of life,” observes Big Fun founder and owner Steve Presser. “This store gives people a chance to recapture that feeling they had when they were children.”
Virtually from the day it opened nearly two decades ago, the store has been a destination for shoppers and collectors from all over Greater Cleveland and beyond.
The store’s original location, on the east side of the street, was “organized chaos,” Presser recalls with a chuckle. “The space was very cramped but organized with a lot of attention to detail.”
With its success, Big Fun soon was bursting at the seams. Late in 2003, Presser approached Marcia Polovoi, long-time owner of High Tide/Rock Bottom directly across Coventry, about acquiring her location. Big Fun opened in its new, larger space in the spring of 2005 with twice the floor space of the original store, plus high ceilings and basement space.
The larger space has enabled Big Fun to expand the range of merchandise it sells to include Army/Navy store-style clothing, greeting cards, and children’s books. Merchandise is grouped roughly by category. A display case which Presser calls the “girl’s cabinet” features Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, and Holly Hobbie dolls. Opposite it, naturally, is the “boy’s cabinet” containing Transformer, GI Joe, and Star Wars toys and action figures. The two are separated by a seven-foot-long GI Joe aircraft carrier, complete with helicopters and airplanes suspended from the dome which covers it.
A graduate of Cleveland Heights High School, Presser had long enjoyed collecting old toys and memorabilia. The idea of opening his own store began when he and his girlfriend (now wife), Debbie Apple, were visiting friends in Chicago. Knowing his passion for collecting, they urged Steve to visit Goodie’s, a store that sold old toys. “Visiting Goodie’s for me was like the scene in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ where it changes from black and white to color,” he recalls.
Goodie’s owner, Ted Frankel, became a friend and mentor and soon was tipping Presser off to warehouse and estate sales. Presser began buying items with a view to opening his own store. While his family supported the idea, he had difficulty explaining it to others. “There just weren’t – and aren’t – many places around like it, so it was hard to visualize,” he notes.
While running a small business is challenging even in the best of times, Presser says the response of his customers makes it worthwhile. “Everyone is so stressed these days, and life is too short for that,” he says. “This is like the safe place on the Monopoly board. People come in to shop, and they leave smiling.”
