About This Web Site

I got my first Animal Alley stuffed animals for Christmas one year, when I was eight years old. I received a group of six dogs from the Purebred Collection: a collie, a golden retriever, a German shepherd, and three Labrador retrievers--black, chocolate, and yellow. These six are still with me today, over twenty years later, and they sparked within me a love of this plush brand. I can't remember now how exactly I first became aware of the brand. It could have been when my childhood friend showed me her AA plush, or, perhaps, I just wandered into the charming AA row with the big sign at my local Toys R Us one day when my mom took me in. Regardless, I quickly fell in love with all things AA plush-related, and the AA section at that same Toys R Us became one of my favorite places in the world. (I'd give just about anything to go back and walk down that row one more time, but that Toys R Us has since been closed and remodeled into a different store.)

As I grew older and learned to use the Internet, I often tried to research and see if I could find out just how many different breeds there were in the Purebred Collection, or learn more about all of the other species of AA plush that I always saw in the store, but never owned. To this day, I have found it difficult to find very much information at all. Animal Alley doesn't appear to be well-archived anywhere online. I am personally a big believer in the archiving and preservation of all kinds of topics, and these stuffed animals are no exception.

My goal is to create an archive on this web site where other people who loved these stuffed animals can find a wide variety of images and information about them--and, perhaps, be able to relive a prior time in life. I hope to be able to collect all the information I possibly can on Animal Alley and collect it here.

About Animal Alley

Animal Alley is a plush brand that was sold exclusively in Toys R Us stores. I have yet to find a date of when the brand originated, but so far, the earliest dates I've seen on plush tags is 2000. It seems that they were produced through the mid 2010s. For the most part, Animal Alley plush are fairly realistic in appearance, although some plush are based on fantasy creatures or have less realistic colors or shapes.

Animal Alley typically had its own section in Toys R Us stores, often with a big sign and square-shaped cubbies along the wall for plush to sit in. I am trying to hunt down more photos of this section of any of the stores, and will post photos of this section as I find them!