1980 to 2024
Celebrating 44 Years of Disney-only Collectibles
The world's first store dealing strictly in Disney collectibles and memorabilia
Fantasies Come True – Walt Disney Collectibles and Memorabilia opened in 1980 but our story starts a couple of years before that.
It started with finding a set of six dwarfs: Bashful, Doc, Grumpy, Sneezy, Sleepy, and Happy. Poor Dopey was missing but we bought the set anyway and thought, Maybe one day I’ll find Dopey to complete the set. That “one day” turned out to be the very next day – the search for Dopey was on!
Finding Dopey led to unearthing all sorts of Disney memorabilia.
Unearthing all sorts of Disney memorabilia led to realizing that if we were into finding and collecting Disney stuff, then other people must be too!
That realization led to the idea of opening a Disney-only store which, led to amassing as much Disney items as we could lay our hands on.
Before long, we had enough stock to fill a store and so, in 1980, we opened the world’s very first Disney-only store. In fact, we were one of the first retail spaces to open on Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, which now boasts a vibrant, dynamic, and thriving community of dozens of stores and restaurants of all kinds.
Our conviction that we weren’t the only collectors of Disneyana proved to be accurate and the store was a success from the very first day it opened. It attracted the attention of magazines and television shows and word spread very quickly.
In the 1990s, we moved west along Melrose Ave to a larger store where we stayed for 18 years. In 2000 we launched our website – www.FantasiesComeTrue.com - which has grown in scope and popularity. It now features over 13,000 individual items and accounts for most of the business we do.
In the mid 2000s, the building we rented was sold to overseas investors and we moved to a smaller location in Studio City.