The Final Farewell from Toys Я Us

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

Sad but true.

[Crackpot]

They should have offered better prices and better customer service if they wanted to stay in business. But they reied on the sensory overload induced in children to drive business yet couldn’t figure out kids don’t drive or have thier own money.

[Big RR]

I agree CP, and I think the day of the big toy store is gone forever; however, when you see how some people are carrying on about it, they deserve this rebuke. I feel bad about the people who have lost their jobs (one of my friend's daughters worked for them in the marketing group and is now unemployed), but I haven't been in one for years and won't miss them. It seems that some people just ride the Big Yellow Taxi and resist/ignore/and them bemoan change: "Don't it always seem to go, That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"

[BoSoxGal]

The only folks to blame are the ones in the boardroom who kept management and shareholder compensation high, bleeding the company’s resources to muckety mucks while failing to change sufficiently to compete in a Walmart world.

Those of us sad to see it gone recall the days when our working class parents could take us shopping there - those days were very long gone and it’s why the giraffe is off on permanent vacation. The last time I set foot in Toys R Us, I was a grad student in the mid 90s looking for a baby shower gift - I got sticker shock within minutes and left to cheaper venues.

One of my all time favorite toys came from TRU, and I still have it to this day - a musical lamb purchased for me by my great grandma in the very early 70s in Seekonk, MA. The musical mechanism still works some 45 years later, and I still have a very faint memory of reaching up to the shelf to grab the lamb in its display box, and the scent of my great grandma and the grip of my mother’s hand.

So you see, Geoffrey’s never really gone so long as he lives in our hearts.

[BoSoxGal]

This is nice to see; Geoffrey has a new home at a children’s hospital:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.mycent ... /775114002

[Crackpot]

My working class parents didn’t have the extra cash to pay for a backwards R and apathetic to downright hostile employees. They broke me of that desire to go there once I got my allowance and showed me I could have some money left over by simply going to a place a quarter mile away. Tho I have to say in modern times thier service and prices had improved (to comparable not better than competition) but they had lost too much market by that point. I’m sad to see them go but not surprised.

[Big RR]

I think it's pretty much the ways things go; Toys R Us put the independent mom and pop toy stores of my youth out of business (and I can fondly recall Shiffman's Toys where I got my first thread, a flexible flyer), and then changes in the market--the rise of Walmart and other discounters coupled with the market differentiation (kids now play with very specialized toys from electronics to sports equipment, etc. which need special stores--a one stop approach doesn't work all that well) and online shopping led to the demise of Toys R Us. I guess they could have changed to meet the new marketplace, but few places do. indeed, the same thing happened to Play World, child world, and the venerable FAO Schwartz (although I did see a store with that name in NYC--not in the original location, so I'm not sure what it is).

[rubato]

I am as deeply dismayed by the death of Toys R Us as I am by the seasonal disappearance of the latest flu strain.


yrs,
rubato

[Crackpot]

Given your posting history I have no idea what sort of feeling you are trying to convey by that.

[RayThom]

Geoffrey has left the building.