J.T. Puffin's is a testament of a parent's love for a child.

Owner Chuck Susmilch said he decided to open his toy shop 24 years ago while looking to buy his daughter, Jenny Goodlund, her favorite stickers.

"I was dragging this kid all over town every weekend trying to find them," Susmilch said with a grin. "And it got really annoying because there weren't that many places where you could get them."

In 1981 Susmilch had just finished his postdoctoral work in sociology at UW-Madison. He hoped to start a business that would allow him to stay in Madison and have some fun in the process. A toy shop turned out to be the perfect fit.

"I come from a retail family and thought this was the kind of business to open," he said. "I could see that this is what the kids wanted."

The name J.T. Puffin comes from the arctic bird that looks like a cross between a parrot and a penguin. Susmilch said he wanted the name to be as whimsical as the business itself.

"We didn't want to call it just Puffin's. So we went around trying to find initials to put in front of it," Susmilch said. "My daughter was Jenny and Tiffany was her dog. It could have been J.C. But Penney's had already taken that one."

The toy store opened a year later, and today it offers an assortment of dolls, stuffed animals, games, puzzles, collectibles, models, toy cars, trucks and, of course, stickers.

Susmilch said he wanted a business where his customers could shop with their children and have a good time.

"I'm not sure that you can have fun shopping in a lot of places," Susmilch said "Here they can actually get to try stuff. We encourage people to try things, to play with them. There are no signs up that say if you break it it's yours."

At J.T. Puffin's, parents and children can play together.

"We'll see people in here for an hour and half with their family," Goodlund said. "There're not a lot of places where you can do that. We can hear them laughing."

Back when the shop first opened, Goodlund was 8 years old. She started working the register when she was 12, and she was on the payroll at 16. Today she helps her father run a 6,000-square-foot retail operation with 14 employees and a thriving online business.

"We do a lot of our business on the Internet. About half of it," Susmilch said. "We were actually pretty surprised that it worked. I did it on a lark over a weekend."

J.T. Puffin's has more than 2,500 Web pages of merchandise including almost 10,000 items from companies like Brio, Playmobil, Jelly Cat, Breyer and Schleich.

Many of the store's toys are the traditional variety, few with batteries or electronic circuitry.

"It is a lot harder when you're a smaller store to have electronic things that require more customer support," Goodlund said. "There are some things. But most of them require your imagination more than battery power." J.T. Puffin's 5505 Odana Road 608-274-5613 www.jtpuffins.com