Pop culture emporium and toy shop brings nostalgia to popular Tacoma shopping district
Eugenia Kirk loves toys.
Walking through Tricky’s Pop Culture Emporium’s new Tacoma location on 6th Avenue on Friday afternoon, her love was apparent in the boxes of action figures, games, merchandise, comics and trinkets that fill every inch of the store from floor to ceiling.
Kirk, the store’s owner and founder, said she buys and sells anything that’s made ripples in pop culture over the past century. Essentially a pop culture historian, Kirk said the emporium serves as a sort of museum designed to trigger customers’ childhood nostalgia and spread joy and happiness.
“We throw a wide net,” she said. “If it made a dent in any way in the pop-culture zeitgeist, then we want it. My old line used to be, ‘We have everything from aliens to Xena.’”
Tricky’s Pop Culture Emporium first opened in Tacoma’s Stadium District in 2007 before moving into another shop on North Tacoma Avenue in 2013.
Kirk said there’s easily over 10,000 items in the store, and it took 33 days to fully pack and move all her inventory into its new 2503 6th Ave. location, which opened last month. There’s new inventory added every day, and toy prices range from 50 cents to hundreds of dollars.
After closing for three months in the early stages of the pandemic and struggling with crime and vandalism in the Stadium District, Kirk said she’s already seen more foot traffic along 6th Avenue. The new location has more space for customers to explore, better parking and more room for inventory in the back.
“I saw ‘Star Wars’ on my birthday in 1977, and, of course, it changed my life completely,” Kirk said. “’Star Wars’ [started] my obsession with cool toys. And it’s been there ever since.”
When working as a social worker, Kirk said, she often felt miserable and would buy toys to cheer herself up. Over the years, Kirk said, she collected so many she had to sleep on her couch and later opened her first storefront selling her personal collection.
“Maybe I have some hoarding tendencies. Maybe …,” Kirk joked Friday, gesturing to the toys all around her. “But I have sharpened my hoarding into good. I use it as a superpower for good.”
People will come in to sell their toys, but Kirk also sources toys online, buys some wholesale, attends rummage sales and swap meets and peruses yard sales of all sizes.
“I’ve bought out houses full of toys,” Kirk said. “The best part of this whole job is when people come in and bring a box or a tub, or if I go to a location and I see boxes, it’s opening the box. Who knows what’s in there? Maybe it’s Schrödinger’s Cat, maybe it’s alive, maybe it’s dead. Maybe it’s vintage toys, maybe it’s tons of Happy Meal Beanie Babies. You don’t know, it could be anything.”
Kirk has sold everything from Tiger King action figures and cereal to Andy Warhol memorabilia, Dune character figurines, superhero merchandise, Mr. Potato Head cookie jars, Barbie dolls, Ninja Turtles, Hot Wheels, Funko Pop!, anime, comics and Disney glassware.
“Anything that has made such an imprint that they made products for it,” she said. “You never know what’s going to walk in.”
Customers of all ages get excited when they see something that reminds them of their childhood. Kirk said she’s had customers visit as children and later come back as adults with their own kids.
Shop clerk Luis Barriga has been a repeat customer of Tricky’s Pop Culture Emporium since he was 16. Now 31, Barriga said he enjoys the “little pieces of nostalgia” the shop offers and draws inspiration for his own hobbies of drawing and prop replication.
Customer Delma Williams has been shopping here since Tricky’s first opened nearly two decades ago. He comes by two or three times a month and collects “everything,” including Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Six Million Dollar Man and Big Jim toys. Williams said Kirk will sometimes call him to say she’s got some new Prince items he might be interested in, too.
“It reminds you of your childhood. You see things that you once had when you were younger, but you weren’t able to get them, so now you can,” Williams said. “I come in with a specific thing in mind, but then I leave with everything else.”
Kirk said anyone looking to sell something can bring it into the shop or give her a call and send her some pictures.
“It can’t be broken and [must be] in pretty good shape. It doesn’t need to be in the box,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be the holy grail of toys … but if it was interesting at one point or another in the past 100 years, then, yes, I’d probably be interested.”
If you go
New address: 2503 6th Ave., Tacoma.
Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.
