A Belfast-based toy store offering fun, imaginative and educational toys will open a location in downtown Bangor later this fall, marking the store’s third spot.
Out on a Whimsey, which has locations in downtown Belfast and in Blue Hill, announced over the weekend that it would open at 49 Main St. in downtown Bangor by the end of November. That location is the former site of CoVort, a co-working space, and next door to Rebecca’s Gift Shop.
Owner Deb Hall and Belfast store manager Bryant Hall said the proximity to the Maine Discovery Museum was one of the reasons they wanted to open a location in Bangor. Bangor lost a dedicated toy store when Toys R’ Us closed in 2018, and there was a short-lived toy store in the Bangor Mall called Toy Maine-ia, which closed earlier this year.
“We are all very excited to be joining the Bangor community,” Bryant Hall said. “We’re hoping to be open by the holiday shopping season.”
Out on a Whimsey first opened in Belfast in the early 2000s, originally selling a mix of gifts and toys before transitioning to being solely a toy store in 2009. In 2019, Hall opened a shop in downtown Blue Hill.
The shop offers a mix of toys, games, puzzles, books and experience-based kits — from dolls, toy vehicles and stuffed animals, to science kits, models, dress-up costumes, puppets and stationary. It offers gifts for babies through middle-schoolers.
Betsy Lundy, executive director of the Downtown Bangor Partnership, said that a toy store like Out on a Whimsey will help fill another retail niche downtown.
“Along with the opening of places like White Lobster Vintage, it feels like small, locally owned retail is turning the corner,” Lundy said. “The Downtown Bangor Partnership feels adamantly that a strong, locally owned retail sector is beneficial to our local economy and to maintaining a vibrant downtown district.”
