Six years after G Boys Garden Center closed, Ralph Gaudio’s Christmas wonderland is attracting plenty of visitors at McNaughton’s Garden Center.
By Mike Monostra
The Sun
There’s no place Ralph Gaudio would rather be during the holidays season than sitting outside his locally famous G Boys Christmas Animation Wonderland.
The 76-year-old Sicklerville resident and his family owned G Boys Garden Center on Route 70 in Marlton for more than 30 years. One of the biggest draws to the store during the holidays was its Christmas display, complete with tons of decorations, detailed scenes and dozens of moving animations featuring cartoon characters, forest animals and, of course, Santa Claus.
When G Boys closed in 2012, the animation display closed with it. However, Gaudio was determined to revive his Christmas tradition. In 2014, the display opened again as Gaudio brought it to Kindy’s Factory Outlet in Philadelphia. Two years later, the display returned to South Jersey as Gaudio’s display found a new home at Cherry Hill’s McNaughton’s Garden Center. The display is now open through Sunday, Dec. 30, and visitors can find Gaudio there every day, taking tickets and chatting with visitors, old and new.
“It’s not work,” Gaudio said. “It’s a fun thing. People tell me stories every day that are just fantastic. I love it.”
Creating holiday displays has been a tradition for Gaudio for more than 50 years, dating back to the family’s original store, Gaudio’s Wonderland, which was located in the Fairview section of Camden. Gaudio still remembers how the idea for a holiday display originated in the early 1960s.
“This one night, we had trees going down the center of this aisle, they were up in the air a little bit,” he said. “The electricity went out. The only thing was the trees didn’t go out. So all of the people went, ‘Wow, look at those trees.’”
From that point on, the Gaudio’s holiday display became a holiday tradition for thousands in South Jersey. The family continued it at its Camden store and then brought it to its new G Boys Garden Center when it opened in 1976.
The holiday celebration at G Boys always consisted of more than just a display. For more than 20 years, the store would kick off the holiday season with a parade down Route 70. The parade would travel from ShopRite down to G Boys and there were always some fun surprises for guests.
“I’d close a lane on Route 70 and we’d have a parade from ShopRite all the way down to G Boys,” Gaudio said. “One year, I had Santa on a live camel. Every year, we’d try to bring Santa down in an unusual way.”
Gaudio said the crowds that would come to the store just to see the display were enormous and admitted it was flattering to see how much of a positive impact the display had on people.
“At G Boys, we had parking for 60 cars,” Gaudio said. “We’d fill the lot next door, where the Dunkin’ Donuts was. We’d fill across the street, we’d fill across the diner.”
“The stuff we did, it made their Christmas the best Christmas they had their whole life,” Gaudio added.
A number of factors, including the poor economy and the elimination of the circle at the intersection of Route 70 and Route 73, resulted in G Boys closing in 2012. However, after taking a year off from putting together the display, Gaudio decided to bring it back. The display found a home for two years at Kindy’s in Philadelphia, but Gaudio hoped he could bring his Christmas wonderland back to South Jersey someday.
A couple of years ago, Jeff Clarke, one of the many people who have worked with Gaudio on the display for many years, was working at the Philadelphia Flower Show when he ran into Tom Measey, the manager of McNaughton’s. Clarke suggested bringing the display to McNaughton’s and a meeting was arranged to have Gaudio pitch his idea of bringing the G Boys display to Cherry Hill.
“We got together, went to Short Hills for lunch, we talked,” Gaudio said. “Then I came here and met (owner) Bill McNaughton. You have to remember, we were competitors for 40 years.”
Old rivalries were set aside and Gaudio’s display returned to South Jersey in 2016 as it was set up at McNaughton’s for the first time.
Return visitors to the Animation Wonderland will rekindle some old memories and find some new surprises. Every year’s display is different, from the layout to the themes to the animations. Gaudio begins planning each year’s display during the summer before he and his team of decorators begin putting it together.
“Usually, it takes us two and half months (to set up),” Gaudio said. “This year, we did it in two months and that was a lot of pressure.”
This year’s display includes a few local touches, including a scene with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles working at Vito’s Pizza and a model of a Cherry Hill post office with cartoon characters sorting through holiday mail.
Gaudio said he gets between 1,000 to 1,200 visitors per day on the weekends on top of the guests who come in on the weekdays. The guests range from seniors who remember visiting the Christmas wonderland as kids decades ago to children who are seeing the set up for the first time.
“When they come in, they don’t want to leave,” Gaudio said about the kids. “They want to stay and live in there. We let them go in there as many times as they want.”
One of Gaudio’s favorite things to do is talk with everyone who comes through, whether it’s re-living the memories of years past with long-time visitors or asking first-time guests what their favorite scene in the display was.
“It’s all about great memories,” Gaudio said. “That’s what it’s all about.”
Gaudio frequently hears from people about how they miss the old G Boys store and wish it hadn’t closed. However, Gaudio is determined to have his Christmas display live on for years to come and hopes many more South Jersey residents are able to make memories that last a lifetime.
“People would say, ‘We’d go by Route 70, we’d stop and we’d cry. We couldn’t believe you closed. This was our tradition,’” Gaudio said. “I would tell them, this is your new tradition. This is a whole tradition for your kids.”
The G Boys Christmas Animation Wonderland is open at McNaughton’s Monday through Friday from noon to 8:30 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The display will be open Christmas Eve from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed on Christmas Day and open from Dec. 26 through Dec. 30 from noon to 5:30 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased at the store and are $4 per person or $14 for a family of four. Children under 5 years old are admitted for free.
Children can also get their photo with Santa Claus each day and enjoy pony rides, face painting and more activities on the weekends.
For more information, visit https://mcnaughtonsgardens.com/cherry-hill-store.
