Igrew up in New Jersey. And because that growing up was done in the New Jersey of the late '70s and '80s there were certain cultural peculiarities of that period that were unavoidable. Among them were: the various tribes of "big hair" girls, the distinctive rumble of Chevy's "fourth generation" Monte Carlo, the ubiquity of the "wine cooler," and the central role shopping malls—many, many shopping malls—played in daily life.

Of these, I miss only the shopping mall.

So, it was like old home week when Sears offered to drive me to the mall in Woodbridge, N.J., to preview one of its 20 new "The Toy Shop at Sears" departments.

Carved out of a corner of the children's apparel section, the shop when I arrived was still a work in progress with several days to go before it officially opened to the public. On the surface it was a fairly modest effort that, were the toy business in better shape, might not be of much notice. But with KB Toys gone, the message may be more important than the shop's modest layout and 1,000 SKUs would seem to a $21 billion toy market. It says to consumers that there's at least one place to go for toys in the mall again—a dedicated space that's more than just a holiday pop-up in a vacant storefront. That's something worth celebrating if you're a toymaker. I'm sure that kids will.

While mingling among Sears' toy buying staff, I couldn't help but notice that even while still in the process of being readied for its roll out—at 10 a.m. on a sleepy Tuesday in late July—off in the corner farthest away from the old guys in business suits, kids were already checking out the mix of mass market and specialty toys Sears was offering, with moms in tow.

On the ride home, my visit to the mall had me thinking about my own childhood shopping experiences. We were a JCPenney family back then, and when there was back-to-school shopping to be done JCPenney was where we would invariably end up. It was a trip I always dreaded, as much for the boredom of trying on clothes as for its significance as the beginning of the end of summer. The one thing that made the experience palatable was that there was an excellent chance I'd find a way to drag my mother over to the store's few aisles of toys once the clothes shopping was through to plead my case for yet another action figure.

I still remember the disappointment I felt a few years later when JCPenney replaced the toy department with a selection of luggage. It was about that same time that the mall's owners removed the miniature ride-on train from the common area outside the family-run restaurant, back before the massive food court was built and drove the place out of business. Except for the brief flowering of Stores of Knowledge and the like in the mid-'90s, it seems like the mall has been a particularly kid-unfriendly place ever since.

Let's hope Sears' move is just the first step in changing that perception. Re-establishing the shopping mall as a destination to which kids want to go can only help the toy business. Letting toys leave the mall in the first place was a mistake retailers and vendors mustn't make twice.