Founded in 1901 by pharmacist Charles Rudolph Walgreen, Walgreens has grown from a single store to become a major pharmaceutical chain, with over 8,000 retail stores across America as of 2012.
In addition to traditional pharmacy staples, Walgreens stores also frequently sell greeting cards, Halloween and Christmas decorations and ornaments, dairy products, juices, sodas, teas, coffees, hot chocolates, snack foods, candies, cookies, cereals, toys, electronics, tools, soap, cleaning products and other novelties.
It headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois, USA. On December 31, 2014, Walgreens and Switzerland-based Alliance Boots merged to form a new holding company, Walgreens Boots Alliance. In June 2021, the majority of the Alliance Healthcare wholesale division was sold to AmerisourceBergen (now called Cencora) for $6.275bn in cash, but the "Alliance" title on Walgreens Boots Alliance remained.
Beginning in 2016, Hasbro offered Walgreens Transformers toys as exclusives, which has since become an annual occurrence. Notably, once released, many collectors find these Walgreens exclusives much easier to find than many of the toys that are exclusive to other chains. However, this may vary from region to region and individual stores may only ever carry 1 case of a given assortment. Fortunately, the relative ease of finding them also means that the secondhand market often has plenty of them to keep the price close to their retail value.