If you feel like you want to be a kid forever, then Uncle Fun, at 1338 West Belmont, is the place to visit—especially this weekend. That’s because the shop is having a garage sale on Saturday, Oct. 1, and Sunday, Oct. 2.

The store is packed with unique, quirky, fun, funny, colorful toys, candy, cards, magnets, prankster-friendly items, dolls and books. There’s a little something here for everyone. You’ll find a magnet featuring a photo of three highway exits, which are labeled “Zoloft,” “Prozac” and “Paxil.” Walk around the store, and you’ll also find PEZ dispensers, Jesus gift-wrapping paper, cinnamon-flavored “Ass Kisser” breath spray for brown-nosers, and a telephone featuring Dr. Seuss characters. Also, near the cash register sit a heap of what look like mini-cassette holders that contain chewing gum inside and feature charmingly cheesy photos of Vanilla Ice.

Billy Roberts, 25, is the manager of Uncle Fun. “Need some help?” he asks a female customer on a recent afternoon.

“Yeah,” the woman says. “I need plastic ants.”

“All the way back in the right corner,” Roberts says. “Hanging up.”

“Thank you,” she replies.

Uncle Fun has been around about 15 years. Previously it was called Goodies and was on Halsted, near Addison. Owner Ted Frankel, Roberts and two other employees run the shop.

Talking about the charm of Uncle Fun, Roberts agrees that the store brings out the fun kid side in everyone. Or, as Frankel would say, coming to Uncle Fun is like landing on the free parking space in Monopoly. That is, it is a safe place where you can be whoever you are, and it’s OK.

“It’s safe here,” Roberts says. “Everyone can have fun. We get little, teeny, teeny kids and you get really, really old people and you get everyone in between. People that have seen it all and done it all. All different races, all different classes, all different economic levels. Anyone can come here.”

Also, Roberts says, “If you want to just browse around, that’s OK, and if you want to buy some stuff, that’s OK.”

So, which items are popular sellers?

“Well, a lot of the classics sell really well,” Roberts says. “Like whoopee cushions. Pretty much every day we’re gonna sell a whoopee cushion.”

Also, he adds, “Now that school has started, we’ve been selling a lot of stink bombs because kids love their stink bombs. I don’t know if I should publicize this too much, but we’re probably the top stink bomb provider in Chicago. When kids need a stink bomb, they come to Uncle Fun. And along those lines, we also have fart machines. They’re very popular.”

Fart machines?

We walk to the front of the store, and a co-worker pushes a button on a small remote. Then when a fart sound is released, Roberts says, “Oh, excuse me.”

Roberts says of the fart machines (aka gassy Cassies), “You can take it and hide it somewhere. Then you just hit the remote to make a fart sound. So, it’s pretty simple. It’s really good for family reunions—or if you’re having a really formal dinner, it’s really good for that.”

New Ricky Martin lunchboxes and He-man boxer shorts also are selling well. Other hits are rubber chickens and handheld devices that have Mr. T’s voice saying “Don’t make me mad!”

Although many Uncle Fun customers are in their 20s and 30s, the shop also attracts many people in their 60s and 70s, plus many infants and toddlers. “All of our customers are really great, and everyone that comes here is fun and creative,” Roberts says, “and they like weird stuff usually.”

The most exciting thing about working at Uncle Fun is “meeting all the cool people that shop here and the cool people that I’ve met who shop here,” Roberts says. He met his current girlfriend at the store about three years ago.

“This beautiful girl came in, and she needed dolls for an art project that she was working on, and I do artwork with dolls,” Roberts says, and he found all of the items that she was looking for in the right colors. “It was like love at first sight. She was a cute, funny, cool girl, and she wanted doll parts. Which I thought was weird and cool.”

Other customers have been Michael Jackson, Pee-wee Herman and Mancow Muller.

Also, Roberts recalls when Tommy Chong—who is best known for his stoner movies with Cheech Marin—shopped at the store a couple of years ago. “He was really nice, but he wouldn’t say that he was Tommy Chong,” Roberts says, “but we knew it was him because we recognized him, and it sounded like him.

“My friend who was working with me said, ‘Did anyone ever tell you you look kinda like Tommy Chong?’ and he goes [imitating Chong in a stoner voice], ‘Man, I don’t look that burned-out, do I?”

Asked where employees find the store’s many unique items, Roberts says, “the basement.” When pressed for where the items in the basement come from, Roberts says that employees find many items from catalogs and trade shows. Also, the owner goes twice a year to a convention in Las Vegas and usually comes back with many new finds, and sometimes owners of closing businesses offer their items to Uncle Fun.

Uncle Fun customers at the shop’s garage sale can expect to find some items that are already in the store but will be marked half-off. Also, the shop will sell many items that have been stored in the basement. The garage sale will be “a treasure sale,” Roberts says. “Everything is going to be really cheap, and it’ll be really fun.”

Uncle Fun’s treasure sale will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.