At the Barnes & Noble in Virginia's Tysons Corner Center, one aisle has a peculiar new configuration. On one side, new current events books about America and its troubles and promise. On the other side, toys: Cook and Play Potsy, My Pal Scout, Ernie Fire Engine. 'I had no idea this was here,' said Charles Davis, an Alexandria resident shopping with his companion, Sabina Sauer. They had stumbled upon the intriguing new world of toy retailing, in which Barnes & Noble, Borders and retailers even less associated with products for little kids - Whole Foods Market, The Vitamin Shoppe - are angling for parental wallets with high-end, mostly educational toys, often with a green component. The new toy hawkers know that children's wares have been an easy path to parents' wallets for eons, particularly during recessions. Older shoppers may recall that the original department stores placed children's items in the very back, so moms had to traverse the entire store, much as many supermarkets stock milk in the rear corner of the store. But in many ways, the latest shift in the $21 billion toy industry represents yet another reordering of the brick-and-mortar world brought on by the digital revolution. The trend toward adding unrelated product lines may seem to fly in the face of the niche marketing that has flourished in the Internet era, but retailers say going broader may be an answer to their woes. The specialty toy industry has contracted significantly in the past decade as big toy chains swallowed smaller independents in a bid to stave off threats from Wal-Mart, Target and Costco. Popular chains such as Zany Brainy and Imaginarium are history. The only stand-alone toy store at Tysons Corner Center is Lego. Toy industry executives say that contraction, along with the heavy influence of Amazon.com - which has shown that a business can establish itself by selling one thing (books) and then add many other products - has given nontraditional toy sellers confidence that putting puzzles, games and other delights on their shelves will not turn off consumers. In fact, the surprise of finding an unexpected toy might be pleasant. About 40 percent of toy purchases aren't planned, according to the NPD Group. That's helped Green Toys Inc. sell lots of tugboats made from recycled plastic at Whole Foods. The company's jump-ropes and tool sets are also sold through EcoShoppe, a green-oriented line of stores operated by The Vitamin Shoppe. 'This is really an extension of what Amazon brought the world,' said Robert von Goeben, who started Green Toys, based in San Francisco, in 2008. 'They moved laterally, and they were very successful at that. Their shoppers got used to finding other items. We now know the Internet is one large buy-everything place, and the bricks and mortars now realize that there are successful lateral moves they can make.' Whole Foods sells puzzles and games by several speciality toymakers in the middle of its supermarkets, in the vitamins and healthy-body section. The toys are eco-friendly and mainly educational, and executives say they are thrilled by the response. 'We gain a lot of customers during big life changes, like pregnancy and childbirth, when people start beginning to be more conscious about what they eat and then moving to organic products,' said Jeremiah McElwee, senior whole body coordinator for Whole Foods. 'We have a very high percentage of mothers and children shopping together in our stores, and we want to be a destination for them. People want to find more variety in that one stop they make.' Booksellers are turning to toys in part because they are finding themselves with extra floor space as their music and movie departments shrink or close entirely, having been significantly disrupted by iTunes and Netflix. Booksellers are also fighting against Kindles and iPads to hold on to book sales. So in the new floor space, booksellers are adding aisles of toys, marketing the new items as related to books because they are educational. Barnes & Noble executives also concede that profits on toys are often better than in other categories. 'The margin for us is not necessarily the motivation, but it has been a benefit of the mix,' said Kathleen Campisano, vice president of toys and games for Barnes & Noble. The chain is now testing going beyond a few aisles, in some stores devoting as much space to toys as to the entire fiction selection. 'How high can we go with this business?' she said. 'How broad can it be? That's what we're trying to figure out.' 'The question really is: What are they going to do when they can't sell books anymore?' said Steven Aarons, president of Barstons Child's Play, a Washington- area chain of five toy stores. 'Are they just going to be a department store?' 