I remember last year some little weenie name Nicholas Tobolski made Twitter accounts for KB Toys and Palisades Toys and was pretending to bring them back... I'm not proud of it but I called his butt out til he shut down all his accounts (well, maybe I'm a liiiittle proud haha)

My first "on the books" job was with KB-Toys, I hated it, especially around christmas time when the furby was first released, believe me, it was much better shopping with them rather than working for them.

Why do you haveta go and ruin my dreams? :D

This is very sketchy. The only information available has come out of social media pages. Even the mainstream professional media coverage only has the LinkedIn post as a source.

From their own bio: "Strategic Marks, LLC acquires and develops trademarks in order to rebuild old brands taht have tleft the market years ago but still are highly regarded. Current brands include: Leaf Brands, Astro Pops, Wacky Wafers, Bonkers! Fruit Chews, May Company, Bullock's, The Broadway, The Bon Marche', Abraham and Straus, Robonson's department stores, Joseph Magnin adn Screaming Yellow Zonkers." I've never heard of any of these.

I’ve heard of/remember a few. Astro pops, Wacky Wafers, Bonkers, The Broadway, and the Bon Marche. Sounds like they buy up a lot of trademarks but I don’t know that they’ve successfully “rebuilt” any so far.

KB always seemed pretty figure friendly, at least in my memory. You could get nearly everything, especially X-men and...Bats...so many Batman figures, with no enemies. A wide variety of cool toys, in a smaller space.

The industry is still going to take a hit. Regardless of whatever they mobilize.

Maybe they'll save some of the dying malls around the country. Local franchise...unlikely as that is. doom. They need to make a new Doom.

Word salad.

Why should I be excited about this news? So they come back and take TRU's place as the toy retailer that marked up all their merch by 20%? Pff.

Lmao, sorry, but look at it this way, I saved you from potential misery.

Simon is among the many mall organizations that replied with interest to Kassoff ‘s LinkedIn post and are now aboard as investors; banks, outside investors and private equity are not involved in this version of KB Toys.
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Yeah I'll just bet malls are interested, KB will have their pick with some of the open stores - especially in 1 local mall. A good way to get even more people in the malls before the holidays. What kid doesn't enjoy a trip to a toy store?

Hope the physical stores stay small, I think a huge detriment to TRU was that they were so big. I always preferred KBT for this reason, even as a kid haha.

I think they will - always recall how cramped they were, like they had too many toys for the space they had.

Was walking in & then past a TRU this week & you're right, that's a huge building!

This sounds almost too good to be true. They're even talking like they're going to be catering in-part to big boy collectors like us.

If this actually happens, I'm assured of having one open by me, as I live near a major shopping district.

If it happens, I'll have a few near me. I live less than a 45 minute drive to at least 5 malls. All of which are Simon owned.

Same here. I have at least three or four Simon malls within driving distance, including one smack-dab in the middle of the aforementioned major shopping district.

The Christmas Season pop up store model should work IMO. At my giant shopping mall in which rent is probably crazy expensive the dumb calendar and novelty store opens up shop every November to February... and they mostly just sell calendars and novelty items. Any mall shop selling toys during Christmas time without much retail competition at that same mall should do just as well as the seasonal Calendar shops.

So, easy access to new and rare stuff for scalpers? Disgusting.

Orrrrrr that person could be in the know about what figures are most likely to get scalped, and take steps to assure that no one buys 20 of the ultra rare figures to flip...

are we getting board games with a "TRU classics" logo on it? that's what I wanna know...