IDGAFF…I’m about to clean up at a couple of Toys R’ Us in my area. Buy some things for my baby cousin and get some stuff for myself. I hope they have the good DC Multiverse toys in stock.
Damn, I remember how much joy I had as a kid just being inside of a toy store like Toys R Us, KB Toys (and various other toy stores), getting to try out the new games/new systems and discovering toys from my favorite TV shows that I never knew about. Then my parents/grandparents/uncles/aunts would make those deals “If you make good grades, I’ll get you that for (insert special occasion here)” Fuck! That was motivation!
Now they’re all pretty much gone. Getting those big toy books around the holidays in the newspaper and looking through it over and over hoping to get stuff they advertised for Christmas was OD.
It’s a shame there’s a lower likelihood that kids from future generations probably won’t experience that kind of joy (at least not in the same way), but will they even care? Maybe I’m just projecting something that was a big deal to me as a kid, as something younger generations should get to have too and it’s actually not that that big a deal for them. I mean, the internet has got that all covered, right? 
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I remember the dark days of the Canadian dollar in the mid 90s… Cost me 120 bucks to get Alpha 2 on SNES lol
Maybe in your fucking backwards-ass Auzzieland.
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FAO Schwarz in New York is awesome. It is the best toy store ever.
First Lionel Kiddy Citty, then KB Toys, Now Toys R Us.
Time to grow up from being a Toys R US kid.
As a toy collector I hate this. However, they didn’t update themselves with the times and were for the most part the only retailer that sold toys at or above MSRP.
I’ve personally gone through two liquidations (Eddie Bauer and Circuit City) so I can empathize with the employees.
TRU accounts for 10 - 15% of all sales so this is definitely gonna restructure the market.
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Children’s Palace was awesome too. I remember when I was a kid, we’d go visit my grandparents and we always went to Chuck E Cheese, but this was the best Chuck E Cheese ever. Had an entire theater style room dedicated to the puppets and had like 3 puppets plus the three backup singer birds. And this one had a lot of arcade games too, so when I outgrew the rides and the ball pit, I could play Fatal Fury or Street Fighter.
Anyway, there was a Children’s Palace nearby and we always went there after Chuck E Cheese. I ended up getting one of those Ghostbusters proton packs there, and also this Voltron figure that wound up being recalled because the Chinesers liked to paint toys with lead based paint back in the day. So after the exchange, I convinced my folks to spring for that Conquest X30 GIJoe plane. Thing was the shit and even came with the pilot!
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I need to check when my local Toys R Us will begin liquidating. I want to pick up some stuff for myself and my nephew.
I’m surprised it didn’t shut down years ago when video games took over. Only a select few places will still sell toys (or most likely expensive well crafted action figures) for adults but they’ll be mainly Anime themed.
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Seems to be the trend. ThinkGeek probably is going to get a slight boost.
Toys are ridiculously expensive nowadays. I wanted to get a WWE action figure one time years ago, and that shit was over $10. All kids do nowadays is play on cellphones/tablets anyway. Kind of sad.
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sheeeeit, those memories, man… yeah an area close to a friend’s house had that combo of Chucky Cheese + Children’s Palace… but it was called Showbiz Pizza at the time… “Billy Bob” the bear was the main dude and Chucky the mouse was a side-character there…haha I just thought about it—that would be some hilarious shit if there’s some dude out there in the world with the name “Chucky Cheese” for real…
…anyway, that was indeed a hell of a combo… parents take ya to that pizza/games place THEN to the Children’s Palace or a TRU right after it. I often daydreamed about how cool it would be to take over a Children’s Palace and just have it as MY castle.
…also… yeah we’d get those big SEARS Wishbooks about a month or 2 before Christmas time… I’d stare at the toy section of that catalog for what seemed like hours at a time, basically craving the cool stuff I saw in there…those catalogs were huge like a phonebook back then.
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All I’ll say is, Toys ‘R’ Us is not a place. It’s a people.
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5 billion in debt since at least 2005. 400 million per YEAR in interest payments. Toys R Us there downfall was there stubborn as hell price scheme. Price EVERYTHING way above retail. $50 retail things become $70+ at Toys R Us for example. Just so they can have a ton of 40% “sales” to bring the price back down to normal. But you have to buy at least two to get it. This is for real what killed Toys R Us. And they would never ever back off it too.
The bankruptcy thing was just some bullshit for them to hang around another X amount of months. Just to try and save face for a bit while longer. I remember when I ordered online some 2011 Thundercats toys from them. Just tossed the toys in a box and those “air pillows” to try and “protect” them. Even there online store is ass.
Reading around, the sad thing is that this doesn’t even seem to be their fault. It’s simply because Bain Capital, who bought them in '05, had a mountain of debt and any profit Toy ‘R’ Us made was going into paying said debt.
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So there probably dead too I see? And this was just 13 years of stalling?
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I probably owe like half of my Transformers collection thanks to Toys R Us. Sad to see them go. Another fragment of my childhood that had to irrevocably go away. 
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You’re just jealous that our ⊥O⅄S ᴚ ∩S hasn’t been taken over by communist pigs.
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