Have you ever been to the Carousel of Progress? Originally conceived as the highlight feature of the General Electric Pavilion during the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the rotating audio-animatronic stage show moved to the Tomorrowland section of Disneyland, in Anaheim, California in 1967. Since 1975, it has become a mainstay of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida a regularly updated feature that allows audience members to travel through time to view American progress through different eras.
The Carousel, with its catchy tune—there’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow / shining at the end of every day—was part of the inspiration behind The Time Machine, a store of wonders, kitsch, vintage statement pieces, reproductions, new items, and even candy, which opened on Haverhill’s Washington Street in late November.
“We knew we wanted to do vintage and new—mixed—and we knew we wanted it to be curated really well, and organized by decade,” says Mark Ferrandini, the store’s co-founder and head of sales and marketing. “So having all our vintage gaming systems, but also the space itself transform and allow you to change the music, the time panel: to really make a fun experience down here.” The goal, he says—one that he and his partners, co-founders Amy Janeliunas and Jay Ferrandini, spent considerable time tabling—lay in bringing “fun” back to Haverhill.
There are, Mark Ferrandini noted, a lot of service-based operations in downtown Haverhill, but the district lacks retail operations. “There’s nothing fun,” he says. “There’s not a lot of retail that combines that whole experiential thing just for folks to come down and do.”
In fact, the trio may have caught Haverhill at the perfect time. A lack of retail was an opportunity—a hole in the market that required filling. With the emergence of new restaurants and new housing (a series of apartment complexes, including The Heights at Haverhill—it boasts the glossy Sardinian restaurant BOSA Coastal Italian—have drawn a crop of young professionals to the area), Haverhill is changing. The Time Machine is the final piece in the puzzle that may help keep community dollars in and around Haverhill itself.
New inventory at The Time Machine is sourced and purchased by Janeliunas, while vintage products are sourced by Mark Ferrandini. Sourcing from estate sales, online sales, and other physical spaces, both Ferrandini and Janeliunas try to follow a certain path to stocking the store. “We’ve looked at a lot of data,” Ferrandini says. “What were the most popular toys? What was the most popular furniture, cars?”
At The Time Machine, you can fiddle around with a reproduction Game Boy; squeeze a hacky sack; stare at a Magic Eye poster (if you’re like me, you may still not be able to see the hidden image); hold a Cabbage Patch doll without being swarmed by a mob of angry moms; peruse vintage buttons; drool over the candy from your youth; play Atari (with help from an employee); and even take a load off in one of several vintage pieces of furniture.
With so much to do in these bespoke areas—the store, not unlike the Carousel of Progress, offers glimpses into the past, organized by decade—it may not come as a surprise that people have been spending more time at The Time Machine than they do in the average store. The average, Jay Ferrandini tells me, according to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, is eight to 10 minutes. Visitors to The Time Machine spend at least 15 minutes—and often 20—in the store, fawning over items that take them back to childhood, playing, and generally reveling in an experience that is, to circle back that Mark Ferrandini loves, fun.
Of course, The Time Machine is still a store, and it’s a store in 2025, which means that its owners understand the importance of the digital age. The store’s entire catalog is now available for online purchase, with smaller items shippable within the United States and larger items available for in-store pickup.
But the trio maintains its dedication to in-person community events. The store recently hosted a vintage show-and-tell event, where community members brought in pieces of their vintage toy collection for prizes. Also on the docket: a video game tournament that includes historic video game trivia and a solo gaming event on vintage machines. “We hopefully want to get people excited about the store,” Jay Ferrandini says, “and the whole vintage world.”
The Time Machine, 41 Washington Street, Haverhill, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, thetimemachine.fun.