I remember those well. We didn't call them weed whackers. They were called "idiot sticks." One might imagine why...

A Farewell That Didn't Have To Be
 

Sad to see em go but the writing has been on the wall since the turn of the century. Seems the only one's who couldn't see it were the company's corporate leadership.

My chief concern is for the employees, mostly due to the fact that, over the past few years, my wife and I have befriended quite a few of them at our local TRU, and have chatted at length with them about things going on in their lives outside of the store.

Especially one of the managers. He's a great dude who tries to help us get a leg-up on the local scalpers when it comes to ML and TFs, and he just recently finally moved into a larger place with his girlfriend. I doubt' he'll have trouble finding work, he has plenty of managerial and retail experience under his belt, but that's still a rough patch he'll have to go through.

The one bright thing I can think of here is that our local smaller toy store will see a boom in business, since it's very collector-oriented and tries to keep all the major niche lines in stock for reasonable prices, and it's just down the road from the local TRU.

But we'll have to wait and see. Even if "the writing is on the wall," I'm not going to rule out anything happening until TRU gives an official statement of full nationwide closure. I might be a damned fool for it, but I'm an optimistic damned fool.

They saw it, they just did not care because they thought they were going to be able to dump it on someone else.


CCC.


(My 1500 post :))

I have no idea how this works. I doubt that if TRU goes under that it would automatically cancel your credit card debt, since you have the card through a bank TRU is affiliated with and not TRU directly. Unless that's not what you meant, however.

From the article:

"The downfall of Toys “R” Us can be traced back to a $7.5 billion leveraged buyout in 2005, when Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and Vornado Realty Trust loaded the company with debt."

True...my local collectible store is usually $5-$10 more than TRU. But once you add in shipping from online retailers it'll probably even out. Either way we can expect to be paying more for our toys in the near future. Fucking bummer.

I live in Tennessee. We experienced the same scenario with Hastings (out of Texas). It was heart breaking. I went to the store probably 3 times a week.

What collector old enough to remember the height of GI Joe, Transformers and Masters Of The Universe (no disrespect to you younger folks) doesn't LOVE to go into a brick and mortar and hunt? I remember when TRU had 12 columns and 12 rows of pegs dedicated to GI Joe. Ahhhhhhhh good memories.

Sad day.

^^ THIS ^^

I'll always be a Toys R'Us Kid. Though today, i am a sad one.

Thanks Toys R'Us!

This is too bad since TRU is the only retail store (that I know of at least) that carried NECA figures. Though, this isn't a shock at all to me. All the TRU stores I've been to look like big ugly warehouses that look like they're stuck in the 90s, Stores were always a mess and tedious to go into, Rewards system was useless, and not to mention it was a complete chore to go actually buy something. Shame no toy retailers exist to fill the gap and Target and Wal Mart really just cater to direct-to-dumpster novelty gubbins now.

I do! This is indeed a sad, sad day. I'm hoping for the best, but it's not looking good.

I don't think big box toy stores will ever make a come back.

It can affect other things, too. My local TRU was already closing. There's a Marshall's next door. I won't go out of my way to check it after TRU closes. There's a 5 Below in the same shopping center, I'll probably go there, not as often (the shopping center is a hassle to get to and out of).

I gave up on finding new figures there after I showed up on a Saturday 20 min early,first in line I waited by the door and five min before they opened the manager opened the out door to two guys he knew and let them have first pick before letting anyone else in.

That sounds exactly like my local shopping center, you're not talking about Arborland, are you? :D

Yeah, this is definitely a bummer. I only shop at TRU when I don't order online.

Well crap, I know the writing's been on the wall but I guess I figured the end would be more drawn out. The only stuff I buy at TRU that I can't physically buy elsewhere, besides exclusives obviously, are NECA items but since I get a lot of NECA stuff this is gonna hurt. My lcs technically carries NECA items but they mark any given item up by at least $5 and if anything's wrong out of the box it's too late to return. I guess I can hope that maybe Gamestop will start selling NECA, they used to carry them online, but their stores are already a cluttered mess.

TRU financial specifics aside, the cause of this moreover is the American consumer. Retail is dying in the U.S. But every time they say this on the news, they point out that retail is booming in Asia. An important detail to not overlook is that TRU is closing its U.S. operations, not operations outside the U.S. So as much as we can point our fingers at TRU higher-ups, don't forget to look yourselves in the mirror, online buyers.

The silver lining here maybe that we no longer have to deal with those awful TRU exclusives that just never show up in stores, preorders that are canceled, or the inevitably doubled/tripled prices on secondary markets.

Small victory. Better than nothing.

Didn't think I would be but, I'm actually pretty sad by this. I grew up going to TRU and in it's day-for me the 80s-it was pretty dam glorious.

Asia is about the only area outside the US that isn't collapsing, and Bain Capital is still trying to offload it. Meanwhile you don't really get to point fingers at "online buyers" when most TRU's can't seem to get the product that collectors want on shelves with any consistency.

Uh...yeah, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is no victory at all. Hot exclusives will still be inflated on the secondary market no matter who sells them, and now there's going to be one less outlet to do so. Moreover it was the most varied brick and mortar outlet. There are a LOT of products that TRU sold that literally aren't on shelves anywhere else because Wal-Mart/Target/Whoever doesn't want to devote more shelf space to toys. Retailers will be less likely to make such products without a major retailer backing them. Amazon MIGHT pick up a little of that slack...but not likely all of it.

Make no mistake, whatever you might think about TRU and its' quality (or lack thereof) of service, this is in no way a good thing for the Toy industry or collectors.

Eh, let's not go this route, because we could easily get into a circular argument of "TRU is floundering because people don't buy at retail -> online ordering allows for more convenience, more chance of finding your intended purchase, and often at better prices," so let's just step away from that one.

Besides, a majority of it is the financial. As has been stated (both here and elsewhere), TRUs do make a decent amount of money, but due to the debts that the private owners have steeped the company in, all that money goes into a big, burning pit of debt repayment, and little, if any, of that money actually goes into the company itself.

You're fucking kidding me.

This is no victory in any conceivable way; in reality, if you give a shit at all about collecting toys, this is going to be horrible for you, me, and the entire industry. And if you think prices are high now, wait until the only national brick-and-mortar retail toy chain in the country is gone. Prices are going to skyrocket on the secondary market due to scarcity.

Anybody who is even remotely happy about this is displaying very short-sighted thinking, not to mention not caring about thousands and thousands of people losing their jobs.

This might be the single most ignorant thing I have ever read here.

I've had just as many bad experiences with the massive box stores like Target, Costco and Walmart as anywhere else. You can't wear rose colored glasses on this, because TRU is not the only retailer of ever being guilty of those things.

If you really think that TRU going away is a good thing, and that it won't hurt the industry at a whole...I just ask you to to remember what the toy departments in Walmarts and Targets looked like back in 2007, because it was about a year later that those stores started scaling their toy departments back because they realized that TRU was no longer going to be a legitimate threat to their sales numbers. There were twice as many aisles full of toys at my local Walmarts and Targets as there are now, and I've watched them gradually become smaller and smaller as the years have gone by.

The truth is, a lot of major retailers look at toys in general as a dead money, and if they had their way, would get rid of them altogether to expand their other more valuable commodities like grocery and electronics. I used to work in retail, and remember having arguments with management over it. Even TRU believed this to a point when they tried to push their floundering Babies R' Us brand into their stores devoted to toys, cutting their showroom space in half. With TRU gone, there's no real viable competition (except among themselves) and well...now they got that green light to do so.

See my earlier story on them honoring their own policies. They have had all manner of internal problems for decades. I even heard once that the mob controlled their delivery/trucking. We will probably never know the full scope of just how bad it really was, but when you have to drive your competitors out of business just to stay in business, how much can it really be the customers fault? There is a reason why they say "The customer is always right." TRU forgot that a loooooooong time ago.


CCC.

I remember when C7 meant TRU. That was ONE aisle of action figures. My Target currently has 2, and I hardly ever go there. I do try to hit a Walmart at least once a week and always walk through the toy section, just in case, and I have 3 Walmarts to choose from just in my immediate area.


CCC.

I want to express appreciation for some very insightful thoughts and observations. I'm sure many lurkers agree.

I likewise miss the smaller toy outlets, with the interesting displays and diverse collections. They seem unlikely ever to resurface. Discretionary retail in general is a car wreck in slow motion. Everybody is drowning in debt, at all levels, and a majority, individually and collectively, seem unwilling to change their behavior and act responsibly. Governments seem totally corrupt and determined to milk what's left of the productive economy to prolong their own bubble. Everything is going to get incrementally worse until the mentality changes.

Demographics dictate flow of capital to some extent, and some of the current situation can be attributed to the post-WW2 Boomer Spike and the fact that those aging boomers who would previously have passed wealth along to the next generation, enabling them to buy nice homes and raise families and buy nice stuff (e.g., quality toys), just haven't saved money like their forebears, making the credit bubble and associated ripple effects worse and more far-reaching than they might have been ordinarily.

I don't know if anyone else here is following events in the energy sector, but that's another looming Sword of Damocles that promises to wipe out any expectations for a more statistically normal, cyclical turn of events in favor of near-term recovery. Things are going to get much, much, much worse, and for a long time, before they get better.

Take good care of the collectible stuff you have, because it could become much more valuable in decades to come.