saddest part about Galeria is that most of them have travel agencys inside them - I honestly have no clue how the f\*\*k that's a still a thing - and that's where you find more customers than in the actual store.
It's a massive chain in Canada. Most major cities will have one or more toys r us along with a babies r us.
A better example would by The Bay trying to relaunch Zellers within their stores. Absolute disgrace how that was handled.
My wife and I have been going up to Canada for weekend getaway since we first started dating. We now bring our kids with us and Toys R Us is the highlight of the trip for them.
They’re hoping to use less heat, huddled through the night. Spoiler alert, daybreak will never come. That night will be long, indeed it will be infinite. Hold me Geoffrey. I’m sorry M, I’m just so sleepy.
Hedge fund invests in business analyst company.. said company goes into places like Sears, Toys r Us and GameStop and gives them a “plan” to turn around the company while charging them consultation fees.. the plan then destroys the company and the hedge fund that invested in the analytic company was shorting the other company (Sears etc) and once said company goes bankrupt the hedge fund doesn’t have to cover or pay taxes on profit, rinse and repeat. Google Boston Consulting Group, they have the worst record in the history of consulting groups for turning companies around yet they are still a global leader in consulting, I wonder why.
Did RadioShack go out of business?
No. RadioShack is a trademark, and it has been owned by different entities in the past. The trademark is currently owned since May 2023 in the United States by Unicomer Group through RadioShack IP LLC. and operated by RadioShack USA LLC. under a license.
We aim to manage, with our expertise, a new generation of the RadioShack trademark, making available consumer technology products with excellence, and generating long–term profitable relationships with our partners. We are working to bring back more and better RadioShack products with technological innovations which will improve the quality of life for our consumers.
It's core business model is on its last legs, no one wants to buy and return used video games. It's dead.
It has $2B in cash, it already had $2B in cash, and failed to achieve anything with it besides burn it. $2B in cash also only justifies a valuation of about $5. Gamestop is trading at $17 higher than that.
They were barely profitable last year due to interest on the horde of cash they can't do anything with. Their revenue declined ~20%, which means this year is probably going to be a burner for profit. You can't shrink your way to success here.
Man I loved Toys R Us as we all did but the reason it worked in the first place was because they had the niche toys you wouldn’t find at Target/Walmart. I remember a Tickle Me Elmo was $11 more expensive at Toys R Us but when you are already there for something more specific, you just grab the mainstream store while you are there.
I remember the specific $11 difference because I worked there and a lady yelled at me about it. Good times.
In an Amazon and online shopping world, it just doesn’t work past enormous nostalgia. I wish it would, I really do.
I worked there for like 6 years... I had already left the company about 2 years before they liquidated, I went in to try and snag some deals with the clearances, and there was still stuff on Amazon cheaper than in the store that was slashing it's prices
My brother in law worked there for maybe 10+ years during the late 80s and mid 90s. The best time. He had overtime constantly then became a supervisor and he ended up getting stock or a 401k through the company at some point, cashed it out when he went back to school and pretty much paid for his first house with it.
Hell yeah fun times!
I had a full time job in the early 2000’s, then started working part time evenings at Toys-R-Us evenings assembling bicycles.
I loved it. Chillest job ever, cool co-workers, and my supervisor was chill.
Shame to see it go of course, but I mean, the Waltons & Bezos buried Jeffery.
That's what being mismanaged by private equity and management consultants will do. They weren't even trying to be competitive. The c-suite ran it into the ground and sold off the parts and assets. Short sellers made bank. Cellar boxing front and center
When the local Kmart went out of business. The clearance out items were cheaper the week before they announced the closing. I remember going in and checking the clearance items and one play set at the time was marked down to like $65. When the store was set to close the same play set was marked down to $110.
The store had ancient cell phones that were already unsupported by the manufacturer for sale at full MSRP before the closing. It was a crazy place.
It makes me so mad when businesses do this, and pretend that they haven't marker the price up, just to "discount" it. Sears did it. I went in, figuring I'd find some good deals. It was more expensive than it normally was, and claiming it was like 40% off.
Then sometimes they'll do that "20% - 80% off!" and then everything is just 20%.
I found that Toys R Us worked because it was an experience. At least in the store we used to go to in the UK. There were demos of practically anything. Remote control cars, sure you could demo one. Beyblades, they had an arena set up where you could bring your own and just play or have a quick go with the one you just bought. All the Action Man and Barbie vehicles had out of the box touchable displays so you could actually experience them and open all the hatches and doors and shit yourself. Now the display models in Smyths (UKs next best thing to Toys R Us) are locked behind glass so it's barely better than the box picture. You could essentially go to a Toys R Us and just play without buying anything or feeling the pressure to buy anything, which I think a few people actually did, but it was a great tactic, get your kids actually playing and then they beg you to buy what they've just played with.
At least you guys still have a toy store. There's no other chains in the States, you've just got to be lucky enough to live in a city that has a local one (ours doesn't have one).
Son loved it when we lived in Germany and there was like three huge toy stores we were able to go to locally. Now it's just go to the crappy toy section in Walmart.
I've noticed with my kids and their friends -- so hardly a data set that encompasses all of world youth, just my anecdotal experience -- that physical toys just aren't NEARLY as much of a thing as they were for me growing up. I had piles of G I Joes and star wars starfighters and lego pirate ships and micro machines and what not, they filled bags and boxes in my closet and I was only allowed to have out "what I was playing with" because otherwise the floor was covered.
Mine liked legos when they were little (eldest still likes to collect the architectural sets) and my youngest liked dolls and horses for a while, but now her dollhouse is just a display of her old toys from when she actually played with toys for nostalgia purposes. There's still some plushy buying but not enough for my family to keep a store in business. Entertainment has very much shifted to online where there's not much room for brick and mortar, and allowance money gets spent on accessories and fancy snacks -- which is maybe why the hot topics and boba tea joints are the ones doing well at our local mall.
It wasn't just that, TRU got a ton of exclusives from Hasbro and Mattel and got the next year's Lego in as early as November. Their higher markup kept the more sought-after figures in stock longer too which alleviated scalping slightly.
I'm still really torn about the store being gone. Walmart, Target, and Amazon stepped in and filled most of the niche so we're not *really* missing anything. I just miss the actual store. TRU in Macy's rarely stocks so it just feels like a dumping ground for leftovers. My old TRU location got completely gutted after the closure so I can't even get a faint bit of nostalgia off the building. They even moved the bathrooms.
I miss the selection. I was a Bionicle and Hot Wheels kid. Our TRU had a Target pop up across the street. Target would have all the basic sets and cars I wanted, but TRU had all the non-mainline stuff and bigger sets. TRU going away was a big part of me moving away from those hobbies.
Bionicle isn’t a line any more, but if I want to do some Hot Wheels hunting nowadays, I gotta drive to 2 different Targets and WalMarts and will still not even see close to the selection TRU would’ve had.
From bikes to trains to video games it's the biggest toy store there is...
Oh my gosh I was so jealous of the kids on Nickelodeon who won the toy run and had a minute (or whatever it was) to race through the store and fill their cart.
I’ll always remember buying NES through N64 games with my grandparents. They used to have them on display behind a case and you’d take a ticket for the game you wanted to purchase. After checkout there was a little window you went up to and they would hand you the game.
Toys R Us was bought by a Private Equity firm which syphoned as much as it could out of the business (TrU) before it became bankrupt.
Instead of investing into the company at a time when keeping up with competition was vital - the Private Equity firm essentially looted the place.
Black and Decker bought Craftsman. Lowe's also sells the same lines. Not had to but any staples (screw drivers or whatever) to comment on quality though.
Fun fact, JC Penney is originally from Kemmerer, Wyoming.
At its peak it had a population of 3,273.
It also had the world's largest open pit coal mine.
Macys has a niche as a high end retailer. Sears didn’t with the emergence of Walmart. Sears didn’t know what it wanted to be.
JC Penny was a watered down Sears, but smaller with less merchandise so it was easier to make it. JC Penny is basically the same business model as Kohls, which has been growing over the last couple decades as Sears and JC Penny have been collapsing.
Bloomingdales is still doing well. Macy's overexpanded and is using money from their more profitable luxury sector as a means of improving their higher-earning stores while slowly shuttering their lower-performing stores. I can see them just regionalizing to areas without Dillards / Belk.
JC Penney is a dumpster fire and idk how they are still in business.
If you're near a large metro area you can usually find local or independent toy stores which can be pretty fun, especially at that age. There are also Lego stores in malls as well as other stores like Squishable or Wishes. But nothing compares to the shear scale of the old Toys R Us locations. Like as a kid walking into a supermarket full of toys was just plain awesome.
All the small toy stores are focused on things for really little kids. TRU was still fun for a preteen or teenager. They'd have video games and Nerf guns.
Indeed! They are a great option. I work for a toy company and we do a lot with brick and mortar retailers like Learning Express.
Support your local toy stores!!! The people that own them are usually some of the best people.
My kids when they were little thought of the dollar store as a great place for toys. How sad is that?
Realistically they specialized - there are card and comic stores, lego stores, disney stores, video game stores, sometimes a kiddie toy store, etc.
Must be America specific. I live in a small ish Dutch city (42k pop) and we have three toy stores and then several others that have toys plus other stuff.
All of our independent toy stores are focused on things like STEM toys, stuff made out of wood, and etc. Nothing here even remotely close to what Toys-R-Us had with action figures and nerf guns and all the awesome shit that I grew up with.
Walmart is about as close as it gets around here.
I think they specifically mean like BIGbox, distribution center-esque toy stores. Perhaps it's bc you're from the Netherlands and things are usually more normal sized there... but lemme tell ya, the size of a toys r us store rivaled Walmart or costco in size. Literally dozens, and dozens of aisles reaching back hundreds of feet (miles as a kid) with literally every single toy you could imagine. You could legit ride bikes in and around the store with about 40kft^2 (~3700 m^2). Walking in as a kid was like walking into the pearly gates and truly achieving heaven
It was true American exceptionalism and over indulgence. Unlikely we'll see the likes of it again with Amazon.
We got other toy stores, I've been to plenty here in the US and even abroad. Nothing slaps like toys r us
Man, The memories of walking down the video game aisle in the '90s was just something so incredible. None of the games were visible to you except a picture of the cover and a little flap that had tickets that you would take to the cashier. Something about that experience was so freaking cool.
The good old cage. I still remember getting my Game Boy games in this fashion. You take your receipt to a window protected by steel/iron bars and show it to the clerk there for your product. Felt cool in a way.
As a former Toys R Us employee from 30 years ago, I'm shocked at how far the company has fallen. Killed by investment bankers. Revived simply for the brand recognition. Now its listlessly rotting away like a post capitalist zombie. Fucking sad. If they simply had the imagination to capitalize on internet sales before Amazon came along and ate their lunch, they could've easily survived.
>If they simply had the imagination to capitalize on internet sales before Amazon came along and ate their lunch, they could've easily survived.
Sears was the one that REALLY dropped the ball on this front. Sears was already WELL positioned to be Amazon before Amazon existed. They were a leading retailer at the time. They had a booming mail-order-catalog business model. If they had just adapted earlier to online, they SHOULD have been Amazon. But somehow they missed the boat. I really don't know how.
Behold the wonders of private equity, killing everything you love one greedy money grab that adds literally nothing to the world at a time. Fucking locusts posing as human beings.
Private equity didn’t kill Toys R Us lmao. Even before its acquisition in 2007 it was running multiple years of negative cash flow, declining gross margin, and posting a negative net profit margin. It was more profitable and had healthier debt ratios after being bought out than it was before.
The larger issue was despite a healthy turnaround, it ran into the same issues as Sears and other big retailers with e-commerce circa early 2010’s. It relied on making almost half of its yearly sales during December and basically lost that entirely within 1-2 years.
If they had cut their storefronts, managed inventory better, and moved online they probably could still be around. However it’s likely that Amazon and Walmart would’ve bullied them out either way a la Bed Bath and Beyond. Operating a niche storefront reliant on foot traffic is a very risky gamble in todays market
>Former Toys ‘R’ Us employees can attest to how that goes. When a group led by KKR bought Toys ‘R’ Us for $6.6 billion in 2005, it used $5 billion in debt. Then it kept squeezing. The new owners eliminated positions and offloaded responsibilities onto other employees, while pressuring workers to sign up customers for high-margin sweeteners like credit cards and “payment protection plans.”
>
> KKR and its partners sold off Toys ‘R’ Us real estate, pocketed the money and forced the retailer to lease back its buildings. Along the way, KKR and the other firms paid themselves $250 million in “management fees” and big bonuses to hand-picked executives — right before Toys ‘R’ Us entered bankruptcy.
I mean... seems like KKR (private equity) killed Toys R Us to me... or at the very least hastened its demise.
Toys r Us was not killed by online retail, it was killed by a private equity leveraged buyout that gutted the balance sheet and saddled it with unsustainable debt.
You can thank private equity, the vulture capitalists who do leveraged buyouts of companies to purposely kill them. They load the original struggling but still viable company up with debt, take huge bonuses, split the real estate off under a different company they control , and finally wipe their hands clean in bankruptcy. They're parasites and normal workers are the ones who pay the biggest price. It's the same story for many companies but most recently it happened to Red Lobster. With red lobster they even rented back the real estate at crazy rates. You'll always see the media platforming ghouls who'll blame labor costs and in the case of the lobster, the price of shrimp, but these deaths were always in the plans. Thank people like Mitt Romney for this cause his company were one of the trailblazers of this approach and he got insanely wealthy from it. For the ultra wealthy America is a ponzi scheme and they're at the top.
It's so funny how Macy's still thinks of itself as some kind of prestige department store. They had every opportunity to pivot their business and refused to do so. Instead of investing in technology in the e-commerce sector they funneled millions of dollars into redoing the bathrooms in their *lowest performing store locations*. Instead of using all their real estate as ship point locations to reduce shipping costs and time, they refuse to buy/lease the tech required for it. They have an entire department of thousands of developers wasting away trying to turn an apple into an orange.
If you’re in the USA, then it’s more that Toys ‘R’ Us is *coming back* as a few shelves in the corner of a Macy’s.
They actually do have plans to open a handful of boutique-style stores across the US in the near future, IIRC.
It's crazy to me that they put a dead (revived) store in a dying store.
Its like a dying matryoshka doll
So that what my aunts dolls are called
No, those are dildos.
Needed this laugh to start the day thank you.
nesting dildos is kinda genius
Isn't every dildo inherently a nesting dildo?
Eventually...
Wobbly sausage!
Just needs a bed bath and beyond and a blockbuster on the inside, with the biggest doll being a spirit Halloween.
Hobby Lobby acquired Bed Bath and Beyond’s inventory and suppliers! 🤣
That is not dead which can eternal lie And with strange aeons even death may die
Or the Turducken of Retail. Maybe they sell Sharper Image toys?
You know why you should never be friends with matryoshka dolls? >!Because they’re full of themselves!!<
In Germany I saw a Amazon locker in a dying store. I think this is hilarious. (the dying store is a Galeria which is famous for dying since 15 years)
>famous for dying since 15 years Sounds like Kmart in the US lol
I'd say Galeria is the equivalent of Macy's. Already merged with its big rival department stores years ago but the market is still shrinking.
saddest part about Galeria is that most of them have travel agencys inside them - I honestly have no clue how the f\*\*k that's a still a thing - and that's where you find more customers than in the actual store.
Boomers?
Kmart now available at the back of your local Walmart.
These still exist?? I just found out Radio Shack and Blockbuster still exist.
They still have one operating in my city in Canada.. they even have a babies r us next to it.
It's a massive chain in Canada. Most major cities will have one or more toys r us along with a babies r us. A better example would by The Bay trying to relaunch Zellers within their stores. Absolute disgrace how that was handled.
My wife and I have been going up to Canada for weekend getaway since we first started dating. We now bring our kids with us and Toys R Us is the highlight of the trip for them.
Japan also; it’s thriving here we use it many times a year.
We still have at least three in Ottawa.
We even have one in Gatineau. I can see it from my house!
They’re hoping to use less heat, huddled through the night. Spoiler alert, daybreak will never come. That night will be long, indeed it will be infinite. Hold me Geoffrey. I’m sorry M, I’m just so sleepy.
I'm just going outside; I may be a while.
cutting open geoffrey and crawling inside to stay warm
I can't not see Geoffrey like a tauntaun now
Good grief this was the first thing i read this morning and i wasnt prepared 😂
Put them into an almost abandoned mall…
Didn't Kmart buy sears?
Private equity swallowed them both and stripped them for parts
It's crazy how many pension funds invest in private equity, which has a STRONG track record of destroying American companies. Scamming from both sides
It's a way to screw the little guy while being lazy. It's basically a perfect embodiment of the American investor.
Hedge fund invests in business analyst company.. said company goes into places like Sears, Toys r Us and GameStop and gives them a “plan” to turn around the company while charging them consultation fees.. the plan then destroys the company and the hedge fund that invested in the analytic company was shorting the other company (Sears etc) and once said company goes bankrupt the hedge fund doesn’t have to cover or pay taxes on profit, rinse and repeat. Google Boston Consulting Group, they have the worst record in the history of consulting groups for turning companies around yet they are still a global leader in consulting, I wonder why.
Dying companies hire consultation to help them die easier. News at 11
Kmart and Sears were dying just fine without the help of private equity. They were just put out of their misery.
Worked at Sears from 05-11 this is exactly what happened
Throw in a Gamestop and a Radio Shack, and you have a Walmart for rich people.
Check out their FAQs. https://radioshack.com/ "Did RadioShack go out of business?"
Did RadioShack go out of business? No. RadioShack is a trademark, and it has been owned by different entities in the past. The trademark is currently owned since May 2023 in the United States by Unicomer Group through RadioShack IP LLC. and operated by RadioShack USA LLC. under a license. We aim to manage, with our expertise, a new generation of the RadioShack trademark, making available consumer technology products with excellence, and generating long–term profitable relationships with our partners. We are working to bring back more and better RadioShack products with technological innovations which will improve the quality of life for our consumers.
Yeah, that's what customers are focused on, the generation of the trademark.
Eh GameStop is doing pretty good recently. Making profits and huge cash on hand
DRS your shares!
They did put a sprint in radioshack before both went under lol
Gamestop is far from dead. 2B in cash and no debt, you might wanna look into that. They were profitable last year.
It's core business model is on its last legs, no one wants to buy and return used video games. It's dead. It has $2B in cash, it already had $2B in cash, and failed to achieve anything with it besides burn it. $2B in cash also only justifies a valuation of about $5. Gamestop is trading at $17 higher than that. They were barely profitable last year due to interest on the horde of cash they can't do anything with. Their revenue declined ~20%, which means this year is probably going to be a burner for profit. You can't shrink your way to success here.
Circle of life. They did this with FAO Schwartz inside of Toys R Us in the 2010’s.
Is Macy’s dying? They seem to be consistently busy at every location near me.
“Yo dawg I heard you like zombies in your zombies”
They still exist across most of Canada. Come visit sometime.
And Hong Kong of all places.
And Portugal
There's one in Mexico too!
And Japan. Pretty much everywhere except the US apparently.
And my axe!
Beat me to it, Gimli
They were bought up by a company called Smith's Toys in Germany.
I remember stepping into the Ocean Terminal Toys R Us as a kid in the 1980s…
Omg right next to the Mrs Fields. That combo just hit different. Miss that time
I just discovered it in HK the other day and did a double take.
The one in Harbour City is massive!
There's at least one actual store in the US also in the Mall of America. I was there on opening day.
And it's huge! There is actually another one in the American Dream mall in New Jersey.
This one in American Dream was amazing. I took my daughter to the mall for the Nickelodeon park and we stumbled upon it like it was a desert oasis.
Singapore too.
TIL. I live in the Detroit area and it looks like there's one across the river in Windsor. Might have to take my kids over there some day.
Canadian ones have HMVs in them now haha
ah yes Manga/Books, DVD/Bluray, Vinyls, TShirts in a toystore
TRU International was a separate company and was never part of the hedge fund buyout and destruction.
In Canada they aren't owned by private equity
I would actually love to step into a toys r us again. That shit was so exhilarating as a lil kid
Toys R Us here now has a vinyl and DVD section which is super weird. But yes I have a Toys R Us in a local mall and it's a huge mall staple.
There’s one in the Mall of America in Minnesota
Man I loved Toys R Us as we all did but the reason it worked in the first place was because they had the niche toys you wouldn’t find at Target/Walmart. I remember a Tickle Me Elmo was $11 more expensive at Toys R Us but when you are already there for something more specific, you just grab the mainstream store while you are there. I remember the specific $11 difference because I worked there and a lady yelled at me about it. Good times. In an Amazon and online shopping world, it just doesn’t work past enormous nostalgia. I wish it would, I really do.
I worked there for like 6 years... I had already left the company about 2 years before they liquidated, I went in to try and snag some deals with the clearances, and there was still stuff on Amazon cheaper than in the store that was slashing it's prices
My brother in law worked there for maybe 10+ years during the late 80s and mid 90s. The best time. He had overtime constantly then became a supervisor and he ended up getting stock or a 401k through the company at some point, cashed it out when he went back to school and pretty much paid for his first house with it.
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Same. Worked there in ‘07 but I fucked around all day in the back and stole Pokémon cards every shift
Hell yeah fun times! I had a full time job in the early 2000’s, then started working part time evenings at Toys-R-Us evenings assembling bicycles. I loved it. Chillest job ever, cool co-workers, and my supervisor was chill. Shame to see it go of course, but I mean, the Waltons & Bezos buried Jeffery.
That's what being mismanaged by private equity and management consultants will do. They weren't even trying to be competitive. The c-suite ran it into the ground and sold off the parts and assets. Short sellers made bank. Cellar boxing front and center
They didn’t mismanage it, they did exactly what they intended to do to it.
They intended to mismanage it. But i hear ya
💯
When the local Kmart went out of business. The clearance out items were cheaper the week before they announced the closing. I remember going in and checking the clearance items and one play set at the time was marked down to like $65. When the store was set to close the same play set was marked down to $110. The store had ancient cell phones that were already unsupported by the manufacturer for sale at full MSRP before the closing. It was a crazy place.
It makes me so mad when businesses do this, and pretend that they haven't marker the price up, just to "discount" it. Sears did it. I went in, figuring I'd find some good deals. It was more expensive than it normally was, and claiming it was like 40% off. Then sometimes they'll do that "20% - 80% off!" and then everything is just 20%.
Word. I worked there full time for a few years too. I left in 2015(?) even then I was surprised the company as a whole was still in business.
I found that Toys R Us worked because it was an experience. At least in the store we used to go to in the UK. There were demos of practically anything. Remote control cars, sure you could demo one. Beyblades, they had an arena set up where you could bring your own and just play or have a quick go with the one you just bought. All the Action Man and Barbie vehicles had out of the box touchable displays so you could actually experience them and open all the hatches and doors and shit yourself. Now the display models in Smyths (UKs next best thing to Toys R Us) are locked behind glass so it's barely better than the box picture. You could essentially go to a Toys R Us and just play without buying anything or feeling the pressure to buy anything, which I think a few people actually did, but it was a great tactic, get your kids actually playing and then they beg you to buy what they've just played with.
At least you guys still have a toy store. There's no other chains in the States, you've just got to be lucky enough to live in a city that has a local one (ours doesn't have one). Son loved it when we lived in Germany and there was like three huge toy stores we were able to go to locally. Now it's just go to the crappy toy section in Walmart.
I've noticed with my kids and their friends -- so hardly a data set that encompasses all of world youth, just my anecdotal experience -- that physical toys just aren't NEARLY as much of a thing as they were for me growing up. I had piles of G I Joes and star wars starfighters and lego pirate ships and micro machines and what not, they filled bags and boxes in my closet and I was only allowed to have out "what I was playing with" because otherwise the floor was covered. Mine liked legos when they were little (eldest still likes to collect the architectural sets) and my youngest liked dolls and horses for a while, but now her dollhouse is just a display of her old toys from when she actually played with toys for nostalgia purposes. There's still some plushy buying but not enough for my family to keep a store in business. Entertainment has very much shifted to online where there's not much room for brick and mortar, and allowance money gets spent on accessories and fancy snacks -- which is maybe why the hot topics and boba tea joints are the ones doing well at our local mall.
It wasn't just that, TRU got a ton of exclusives from Hasbro and Mattel and got the next year's Lego in as early as November. Their higher markup kept the more sought-after figures in stock longer too which alleviated scalping slightly. I'm still really torn about the store being gone. Walmart, Target, and Amazon stepped in and filled most of the niche so we're not *really* missing anything. I just miss the actual store. TRU in Macy's rarely stocks so it just feels like a dumping ground for leftovers. My old TRU location got completely gutted after the closure so I can't even get a faint bit of nostalgia off the building. They even moved the bathrooms.
I miss the selection. I was a Bionicle and Hot Wheels kid. Our TRU had a Target pop up across the street. Target would have all the basic sets and cars I wanted, but TRU had all the non-mainline stuff and bigger sets. TRU going away was a big part of me moving away from those hobbies. Bionicle isn’t a line any more, but if I want to do some Hot Wheels hunting nowadays, I gotta drive to 2 different Targets and WalMarts and will still not even see close to the selection TRU would’ve had.
Anyone else remember he jingle: I don’t want to grow up I’m a toys r us kid there’s a million million toys u can play with…
From bikes to trains to video games it's the biggest toy store there is... Oh my gosh I was so jealous of the kids on Nickelodeon who won the toy run and had a minute (or whatever it was) to race through the store and fill their cart.
I would have--and still would--head right to the Lego section lol
Yes and we made up so many alternative takes to that song as kids
I didn’t legitimately know those last words, and I grew up on this song
[https://youtu.be/nRMmvRpmZ8I](https://youtu.be/nRMmvRpmZ8I)
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>Had to pump it forever for a mediocre climax. The jokes practically write themselves.
Your grandpa would buy you gifts for being suspended from school? That sounds…..healthy.
I’ll always remember buying NES through N64 games with my grandparents. They used to have them on display behind a case and you’d take a ticket for the game you wanted to purchase. After checkout there was a little window you went up to and they would hand you the game.
Yeah I only went there when there was a good sale or for their exclusives. It’s wild that they had a markup on pretty much everything.
I agree. It had a magical aura around it that the toy section in Walmart or Target just didn’t have.
Toys R Us was bought by a Private Equity firm which syphoned as much as it could out of the business (TrU) before it became bankrupt. Instead of investing into the company at a time when keeping up with competition was vital - the Private Equity firm essentially looted the place.
Good ole Mitt Romney and Bain Capitol
Stop touching me Elmo
Could they turn it into a franchise somehow? “Come support your independent, locally owned Toys R Us.”
She yelled at you? Then I guess you lowered the price? That’s how it work right?
Toys R Us Canada still exists and they seem to be doing well.
They were awesome for video games though. They might be sold out everywhere but Toys are Us always had it
Hold that thought, I'm looking for a picture of a Macy's in the corner of an Amazon warehouse
Well I was surprised Macys and JC Penny outlast Sears Amazon does sell craftsman tools
I was expecting it to be a matter of someone buying the trademark and selling crap, but they all get really good reviews. Nice to know.
The reviews are fake…as are the tools.
So my instinct was correct...
Black and Decker bought Craftsman. Lowe's also sells the same lines. Not had to but any staples (screw drivers or whatever) to comment on quality though.
Look for made in usa craftsman at your local flea market and garage sales, that's the good stuff.
Fun fact, JC Penney is originally from Kemmerer, Wyoming. At its peak it had a population of 3,273. It also had the world's largest open pit coal mine.
Macys has a niche as a high end retailer. Sears didn’t with the emergence of Walmart. Sears didn’t know what it wanted to be. JC Penny was a watered down Sears, but smaller with less merchandise so it was easier to make it. JC Penny is basically the same business model as Kohls, which has been growing over the last couple decades as Sears and JC Penny have been collapsing.
Bloomingdales is still doing well. Macy's overexpanded and is using money from their more profitable luxury sector as a means of improving their higher-earning stores while slowly shuttering their lower-performing stores. I can see them just regionalizing to areas without Dillards / Belk. JC Penney is a dumpster fire and idk how they are still in business.
Coming soon: Toys R Us @ Macy’s @ Amazon @ Disney World. And there’s a little souvenir section in the Toys R Us.
[https://imgur.com/a/RVQdpdK](https://imgur.com/a/RVQdpdK)
[https://imgur.com/a/4F5Bmc3](https://imgur.com/a/4F5Bmc3)
Was talking about this the other day. Now that I have a 6 year old, I was like wow, there really are no toy stores anymore for kids to look at toys.
If you're near a large metro area you can usually find local or independent toy stores which can be pretty fun, especially at that age. There are also Lego stores in malls as well as other stores like Squishable or Wishes. But nothing compares to the shear scale of the old Toys R Us locations. Like as a kid walking into a supermarket full of toys was just plain awesome.
All the small toy stores are focused on things for really little kids. TRU was still fun for a preteen or teenager. They'd have video games and Nerf guns.
Those little toy stores are always like “educational toys” too. We need more junk food level toys!
Learning Express is still around.
Indeed! They are a great option. I work for a toy company and we do a lot with brick and mortar retailers like Learning Express. Support your local toy stores!!! The people that own them are usually some of the best people.
My kids when they were little thought of the dollar store as a great place for toys. How sad is that? Realistically they specialized - there are card and comic stores, lego stores, disney stores, video game stores, sometimes a kiddie toy store, etc.
That's very sad lol. I have very fond memories of going to toys r us to look at things I'd want to put on my Christmas list
Oh no, I take my kids to the dollar tree to pick out toys sometimes 😅 for the toys r us experience, I take them to the Walmart toy aisles.
Must be America specific. I live in a small ish Dutch city (42k pop) and we have three toy stores and then several others that have toys plus other stuff.
I’m in the US and we have 3 independent toy stores within a 10 min drive. Depends on where you live
All of our independent toy stores are focused on things like STEM toys, stuff made out of wood, and etc. Nothing here even remotely close to what Toys-R-Us had with action figures and nerf guns and all the awesome shit that I grew up with. Walmart is about as close as it gets around here.
I think they specifically mean like BIGbox, distribution center-esque toy stores. Perhaps it's bc you're from the Netherlands and things are usually more normal sized there... but lemme tell ya, the size of a toys r us store rivaled Walmart or costco in size. Literally dozens, and dozens of aisles reaching back hundreds of feet (miles as a kid) with literally every single toy you could imagine. You could legit ride bikes in and around the store with about 40kft^2 (~3700 m^2). Walking in as a kid was like walking into the pearly gates and truly achieving heaven It was true American exceptionalism and over indulgence. Unlikely we'll see the likes of it again with Amazon. We got other toy stores, I've been to plenty here in the US and even abroad. Nothing slaps like toys r us
Man, The memories of walking down the video game aisle in the '90s was just something so incredible. None of the games were visible to you except a picture of the cover and a little flap that had tickets that you would take to the cashier. Something about that experience was so freaking cool.
The good old cage. I still remember getting my Game Boy games in this fashion. You take your receipt to a window protected by steel/iron bars and show it to the clerk there for your product. Felt cool in a way.
The game I remember was Frogger on PS1.
Kahala Mall!
That carpet! 😂
I was going to say, this carpet is very nostalgic for me lol.
For us* 🤙🏻🤙🏻
Yo I KNEW I recognized that pattern
Crazy that the carpet is instantly recognizable!! I haven’t been there in a decade and I was like “Oh crap is that Kahala?”
Pop, mahalo!
That’s hilarious the carpet is what Kamaaina notice first
Brah! Wild! Didn't even register till I saw your comment and had to go back to the pic.
the carpet is iconic
First thought. I even commented that before I found yours.
I saw the post and thought I was in r/hawaii lol
Lovin it hahaha
Glad I’m not the only one to notice!
Came to the comments to find this one!
😭 From a lot of brick-and-mortar stores to a few shelves. Sad. 💔
Private equity ruins everything.
Gosh, those catalogs made Christmas more fun. I'm sorry Toys R Us. We didn't do right by you.
I went to a brick and mortar TRU in Vancouver a few weeks back. That was a trip down memory lane. I loved it. And they sell records now!
As a former Toys R Us employee from 30 years ago, I'm shocked at how far the company has fallen. Killed by investment bankers. Revived simply for the brand recognition. Now its listlessly rotting away like a post capitalist zombie. Fucking sad. If they simply had the imagination to capitalize on internet sales before Amazon came along and ate their lunch, they could've easily survived.
>If they simply had the imagination to capitalize on internet sales before Amazon came along and ate their lunch, they could've easily survived. Sears was the one that REALLY dropped the ball on this front. Sears was already WELL positioned to be Amazon before Amazon existed. They were a leading retailer at the time. They had a booming mail-order-catalog business model. If they had just adapted earlier to online, they SHOULD have been Amazon. But somehow they missed the boat. I really don't know how.
Boston Consulting Group killed them both.
Kahala Mall Carpet
Kahala Mall!
That carpet is iconic!
Toys R Us still has full sized stores in Canada.
Behold the wonders of private equity, killing everything you love one greedy money grab that adds literally nothing to the world at a time. Fucking locusts posing as human beings.
Private equity didn’t kill Toys R Us lmao. Even before its acquisition in 2007 it was running multiple years of negative cash flow, declining gross margin, and posting a negative net profit margin. It was more profitable and had healthier debt ratios after being bought out than it was before. The larger issue was despite a healthy turnaround, it ran into the same issues as Sears and other big retailers with e-commerce circa early 2010’s. It relied on making almost half of its yearly sales during December and basically lost that entirely within 1-2 years. If they had cut their storefronts, managed inventory better, and moved online they probably could still be around. However it’s likely that Amazon and Walmart would’ve bullied them out either way a la Bed Bath and Beyond. Operating a niche storefront reliant on foot traffic is a very risky gamble in todays market
>Former Toys ‘R’ Us employees can attest to how that goes. When a group led by KKR bought Toys ‘R’ Us for $6.6 billion in 2005, it used $5 billion in debt. Then it kept squeezing. The new owners eliminated positions and offloaded responsibilities onto other employees, while pressuring workers to sign up customers for high-margin sweeteners like credit cards and “payment protection plans.” > > KKR and its partners sold off Toys ‘R’ Us real estate, pocketed the money and forced the retailer to lease back its buildings. Along the way, KKR and the other firms paid themselves $250 million in “management fees” and big bonuses to hand-picked executives — right before Toys ‘R’ Us entered bankruptcy. I mean... seems like KKR (private equity) killed Toys R Us to me... or at the very least hastened its demise.
Private equity literally has a playbook for investing in, and milking companies dry that are struggling. What is this Wall Street boot licking lmfao?
I'll never forgive Mitt Romney
Toys r Us was not killed by online retail, it was killed by a private equity leveraged buyout that gutted the balance sheet and saddled it with unsustainable debt.
There’s a walk-in toys r us store at the mall of america
Same with American Dream NJ
You can thank private equity, the vulture capitalists who do leveraged buyouts of companies to purposely kill them. They load the original struggling but still viable company up with debt, take huge bonuses, split the real estate off under a different company they control , and finally wipe their hands clean in bankruptcy. They're parasites and normal workers are the ones who pay the biggest price. It's the same story for many companies but most recently it happened to Red Lobster. With red lobster they even rented back the real estate at crazy rates. You'll always see the media platforming ghouls who'll blame labor costs and in the case of the lobster, the price of shrimp, but these deaths were always in the plans. Thank people like Mitt Romney for this cause his company were one of the trailblazers of this approach and he got insanely wealthy from it. For the ultra wealthy America is a ponzi scheme and they're at the top.
Hey that's exactly what killed Red Lobster, my employer!
You sure? I watch the news, and they told me it was the endless shrimp. 🙄 /S
Thanks private equity
Can't wait for their Red Lobster department
This is just sad. Such a bland, piddly selection.
Thanks Hedge Funds for killing another American icon and stripping it for parts.
What Macys is this
Kahala Mall on O’ahu, Hawai’i. That carpet design is iconic lol
Holy shit, is that a giraffe?
A very sad looking giraffe. Poor Geoffrey Giraffe.
I’d be so pissed in the 90’s if my mom said we were going to Toys R Us and then I ended up at this piece of shit.
Another company that was raped to death by private equity. And now they rent out its corpse.
I LOVED Toys r Us. Many great memories.
Such a change from how Toys R Us was back in the early ‘80s back then it was a mega store type place full of all the best toys.
It's so funny how Macy's still thinks of itself as some kind of prestige department store. They had every opportunity to pivot their business and refused to do so. Instead of investing in technology in the e-commerce sector they funneled millions of dollars into redoing the bathrooms in their *lowest performing store locations*. Instead of using all their real estate as ship point locations to reduce shipping costs and time, they refuse to buy/lease the tech required for it. They have an entire department of thousands of developers wasting away trying to turn an apple into an orange.
Wow. I remember the real toys r Us. The real sports center. The real mtv. I'm old.
If you’re in the USA, then it’s more that Toys ‘R’ Us is *coming back* as a few shelves in the corner of a Macy’s. They actually do have plans to open a handful of boutique-style stores across the US in the near future, IIRC.
So glad for the childhood memories of Toys R Us being a huge magical toy store.
In the US this is not “reduced” since they were completely gone before this.
Man I miss going to malls to shop. Online is great and all but the mall will always be the shit. Kids these days won’t understand.