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HomeUntold storiesOriginal reportingPopCultGang: The retro toy store that’s Aarhus’s best kept secret

PopCultGang: The retro toy store that’s Aarhus’s best kept secret

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PopCultGang’s numerous fans include some of LEGO’s top designers, the Danish president of Nintendo and a lot of ordinary people with some extraordinary passions.

Just a few minutes’ walk from Aarhus’s famous city centre art museums, tucked away on a side street, sits another, very different type of art museum. But an art museum no less. PopCultGang, one of Denmark’s only dedicated retro toy and game stores, is also one of Aarhus’s best kept secrets. But the store, which opened its doors in September 2023, has many devoted fans, my family among them. We stumbled upon PopCultGang during a weekend stroll around the cobbled streets and red-brick buildings of the city and knew we had to go in. Now, it’s a regular and much-loved stop every time we visit Aarhus. I tell everyone I speak to in Denmark that they have to visit!

Owners Amalie Patricia & Mathias Bjørnskov, a “toy-collecting, retro game-loving, B-movie aficionado couple”, hear this often. “Lots of people tell us, ‘I just walked by and I had to come in,” says Amalie. The shop, with its distinctive purple, yellow and blue exterior, stands out amid its more muted, more typically Danish neighbours and its owners are equally colourful both in personality and dress. It’s impossible not to fall in love with this multicoloured world of nostalgia and its shelves crammed with more retro toys than you can possibly imagine.

The store had been a dream of Amalie and Mathias for years before it opened. The couple met over a decade ago, initially bonding on the cult MySpace platform over their shared love of nostalgia and collecting. Mathias had already built a sizable retro video game collection by this point, helped by a part-time job he had in a thrift shop, whilst Amalie’s lifelong passion for Barbies was also fully-fledged. The couple were soon able to meet in person and the rest is history. Their shared passion for toys and all things retro even shaped their wedding, which was a costume party: Amalie dressed as Princess Bubblegum from the US animated series Adventure Time and Mathias came as a porg from Star Wars. Instead of gifts, they asked their guests to buy a costume to wear on the day.

The store itself started to take shape when Amalie launched an Instagram account in 2019 to share some of their own most treasured finds. “I always wanted to have my own place,” Amalie says. “ A cafe or a shop where people could come and hang out and be part of it.” However, she and Mathias still weren’t convinced there was enough of a market in Denmark for a shop selling retro toys and games. Then they started selling at occasional conventions, mainly to pare back the vast collections they’d both built up by this point: “boxes and boxes, up to the ceiling”. They were overwhelmed by the response. “I was getting the same super-excited reaction from people there that I had when I found the things in the first place,” Amalie remembers. “I was like, ‘This is amazing!’ And I started to think: maybe we could do something with this.”

A chance meeting with their now close friend and assistant Maja at an Aarhus flea market was “a groundbreaking moment”. Maja, then a teenager, was with a group of friends. One of the group stood out to Amalie because of the home-made Garfield pants he was wearing, crafted from children’s bed sheets. Amalie often wears similar creations in the shop. “I remember thinking “Oh my god, there really are so many people who like this stuff,” Amalie says. 

Soon afterwards, a video game series, “Who’s Your Daddy”, that Mathias, a successful composer, had written the soundtrack for, became a hit. He and Amalie felt they were finally financially secure enough to take a risk on opening the PopCultGang store. It was an instant success, which they still find slightly surreal. “We were both scared in case no one showed up!” Amalie says. “We were like: what are we going to do if no one comes? But in the end there was a line down both sides of the street. Hundreds of people. It was crazy. What we sold on the first day was way, way beyond our expectations.” And of course, assistant Maja and their friends were among the first in the queue. “Yeah, I bought a lot,” they remember. 

These days, Maja works at the store. Their first duties included giving “My Little Pony spas”, washing and styling the toy ponies, which are also their main collecting interest, to restore them to immaculate condition. “It was fun,” they remember, but harder physical work than you’d think. “I’d go home complaining about my back aching and my friends, who were working boring, dead-end jobs, would just be like: ‘You’re so annoying!’” Even so, it’s their dream job. “If I could have told me as a child that as an adult, I’d be styling My Little Ponies for a job, I would have been ecstatic!” they laugh. “Everything I do here is just fun, even the less interesting stuff. I’m still surrounded by toys, listening to Nintendo soundtracks!”

All three think Danish attitudes to adults collecting and being passionate about toys are becoming more accepting. “Traditionally, people have looked down on it here,” Mathias says. “I experienced that. I had a retro game collection when I met Amalie that I was really scared to show her! I was really embarrassed about it!”

“People don’t really want to stand out in Denmark,” Amalie adds. “They want to be one of the crowd.” 

Nowadays, they are more than happy to stand out. “We three are very unapologetically nerdy,” says Maja, and they think more and more people are becoming confident saying the same. They attribute this partly to the Pandemic: “The quarantine made people sit at home a lot and be on the internet more. Geek culture and nerd culture had a huge boom. That’s helped,” Maja says. Mathias too has sensed a change: “People used to come in and say, ‘Can you really do this?’. Now they’re like, ‘Wow, this is super cool!’” 

So what motivates people to buy retro toys? They notice two things in particular: people buying back the toys they loved as children but no longer have, and people buying the toys they always wanted and never got as children. “The thing we’re told the most is, ‘Oh my god, I had that when I was a kid,” Maja says. 

Amalie, Mathias and Maja also think the increasingly international culture in Aarhus has helped the store’s success. They’re aware of customers who will travel from far away to track down the toys they collect. They purposely avoid selling Danish toys, which they say tend to be characters for very small children rather than ones with more adult appeal, and they rarely sell LEGO unless it’s merchandise or a particularly unusual item. They’re fascinated by the toys people collect in different countries. “We had a couple who came all the way from France because they heard we sell Jojos,” Mathias says. “They’re little plastic toys – a bit like a flip the bottle challenge. People from France are super into them. They were huge in Denmark but you couldn’t get them in a lot of countries. These people found out we had them and came especially. We linked them up with some thrift stores here as well and that was all that couple did during their holiday here – just went around looking for Jojos! And now they’re opening a museum!”

Amalie and Mathias have deliberately chosen to create an “international-friendly environment” through the messaging of the store, the new online shop and their Instagram account, which frequently goes viral. “We feel it really opens up our audience that our business language is English,” Mathias says. “That sets us apart from our competitors, not that we really have that many competitors. Even in places like London, we haven’t found many stores like PopCultGang.”

They feel PopCultGang offers a different, more personal experience for customers than a thrift store or a chain store can. Most importantly, they know their customers find a safe haven in the store where they can freely express their passions. “It is funny when people come into the store and you think, ‘I never would have guessed that you collected Spiderman’”, Maja says. “I think a lot of people are secretly nerds but they don’t have the space to be that in their everyday lives or they don’t want to be associated with it, which is kind of sad. PopCultGang is a space where people can come and see that other adults like the same things and they don’t need to feel ashamed of it. Who should be ashamed of collecting toys? It’s so silly.” 

“We see people who have collected for many years,” Amalie says, “ But they’ve never told anyone and when they come here they’re like ‘This might be a really weird question but do you have this and this?’ And I’ll say ‘Yeah, we do!’ and they’re like, ‘Woah!’

Maja thinks Amalie and Mathias themselves are key to the feeling of community and acceptance their customers find at PopCultGang: “They are so good at remembering what people like. We have a guy who collects anything to do with Batman and Amalie will keep things for him. People appreciate that we remember. The little connections are so nice. They create this community of people who feel very seen.” Maja says they know “a lot of people who’d rather buy here than online. The prices will be slightly higher but they’re supporting this unique place and lovely people, and ensuring its community continues to exist.”

The store has even been set up with a cafe atmosphere. It has a seating area at the back where customers can buy a soda and play video games in comfort. 

They do build relationships with their customers: “Some of our best friends have come from the store,” Mathias says. “And then there are lots of people whose names we don’t know but we remember them from what they collect. We have a girl who collects only tall-necked dinosaurs. She’s very specific. At one point we thought we had found one but she was like, No, it’s not the right kind!” They list other frequent customers, including “a girl who collects only ugly Shrek things”, the previously mentioned “Batman guy” and “The Barbie and Bratz doll person”.

“I always remember faces and if I see them again I’ll remember what they bought,” Amalie says. “I never know if people find me creepy for that!”

“Sometimes we might not see someone for a while and we do wonder if they’re ok,” Mathias says. Suddenly, the three remember a customer who they haven’t seen recently and break off from the interview for a few minutes to discuss him and when they all last saw him in the store. “Yeah, I really hope he’s ok,” Mathias says, sounding worried.

They describe most of what they sell as “Weird and unusual items, not what you’d usually find.” Mathias says they’ve now “seen so much that when we see something we didn’t know existed, that’s the coolest thing.”

Occasionally, they do come across an ultra-rare, once-in-a-lifetime item. “The big one was a Super Mario game signed by Shigeru Miyamoto,” Mathias says. “That was the most expensive item we ever sold, for 50.000 kr. We didn’t even know how to value it because it was such a unique item. 50.000 kr was the highest price we could imagine selling it for. Lots of people gave us bids, then this guy from the US said he would buy it. He wanted it for a museum collection. He got it valued after he bought it and the price was 200.000 kr! I know he didn’t sell it though – I still talk to him! He’s a serious collector!”

But isn’t the greatest challenge of being a toy collector running a toy store how you stop yourself just buying up all the stock? It is hard, they all laugh. “I used to buy things all the time, things I didn’t even collect, because I thought they were cool,” Maja says. “I’d be like: I can’t just leave it! Now, buying stuff for the store satiates my hunger. But I still buy a lot of stuff here!”

“We do buy from ourselves,” Amalie admits. 

“But maybe not as much as you would have if you didn’t have the store!” Maja replies.

It can also be hard to sell items that they really love. They remember a “huge ALF plush toy” the titular character from the 1980s US children’s series fondly. “He was like our mascot for a while. He would sit on the couch at the back of the store and I got so emotionally connected to him! I would hug him all the time!” Maja says. “We would often put him in the window as well. Then one day someone bought him! It was pretty heartbreaking. Mathias made an Instagram Story saying ‘Whoever bought ALF, I hope you rot in hell!’ He wasn’t sure whether it was too much but people found it pretty funny!”

“I put a note in the package for the customer saying how much we loved ALF,” Amalie recalls. “So they knew how special he was to us!”

Today, Mathias is wearing a puppet ALF on one hand, a belated Christmas present from Maja. At times during the interview he gesticulates with the puppet to underline his point; at others he gazes affectionately at it. “I love hand puppets,” Mathias says. “You have to make sure he’s in the pictures of us we take. He’s one of us,” he tells me. 

Some items in the shop, including a large Nintendo 64 display stand from the late 1990s, are just too precious for them to part with. “The Danish president of Nintendo tried to make us an offer for that,” Mathias says. “He didn’t have one and he really wanted it. But we said no. It’s part of the store.”

Mathias’s Instagram Story flaming of the guy who bought ALF is in keeping with his approach to marketing the store. They have a growing following on the platform, where they share exciting finds from their weekend thrifting trips and other highlights they know customers will love. He believes in “anti-marketing. I’m so tired of the usual corporate promotions. I want to make it weird and creative. Our store mascot is a Danish rapping cowboy called Chris Hart who’s 80! He appears in a lot of our Instagram Stories. It’s gone a bit viral in Denmark! People think he actually lives in our basement!” For the store’s one-year anniversary, they did a “1% off” offer. Like everything about the store, their marketing is “very much reflective of us as people, not a big corporate machine.”

Recently, they launched the online store, which they’re excited about but finding challenging due to the unique nature of their business. “There’s so much stuff,” Amalie says. “And usually only one of each item. It takes a while.” She says Mathias is “like a machine” at listing items.

“We put a lot of love into our descriptions,” Mathias says. “I’ll write a lot of Easter Eggs (secrets, tricks and jokes hidden in the description), even a full diary of an experience I had ten years ago with that specific toy. I did one recently that was basically just an insult to the future person who might buy that item!”

So what next for PopCultGang? They want to continue to build the online store to complement the physical shop, and they want to do more events, such as retro gaming nights, which have proved really popular. But they also love just coming to work every day at the store. It’s never dull. “We’re learning all the time,” Mathias says. “Every day we stumble across some weird thing we’ve never heard of before. I used to read action figure encyclopedias and try to become some kind of expert but still figures would come in that we’d never seen!” He smiles. “We just like to have fun.” 

Ali Lewis
Ali Lewis
Ali Lewis is a writer and teacher originally from Scotland. She now lives in Billund, Denmark, with her wife and two sons. Besides writing for Last Week in Denmark, she is obsessed with music and frequently contributes to the Berlin-based music and culture magazine FastForward. Follow her on Substack at https://substack.com/@alilewis1

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