Boots has been on our high streets for over 175 years. Not so much an institution as a piece of national furniture: immovable, unavoidable, and always useful. These days, I mostly duck in for toothpaste or ibuprofen, but as a child it was paradise in fluorescent strip-lighting. Not only did it contain toys, but it also had computer games, music and videos - what more could an excitable nipper want? Calpol? Well, yep, Boots had that too.
Boots has mostly abandoned the business of entertainment since then; Amazon do it quicker, cheaper and with less queues. But we can relive the excitement again by flicking through the Autumn 1985 edition of Boots Freetime.
