darkSpyro

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/0...ttel/index.html

Sources claiming that they could shut 100% of USA stores by next week. BIG sales coming I guess...

End of an era.

:-(

Oh ****... this is rather upsetting. I’ll certainly miss going to the store and grabbing random action figures and the like.

That begs the question on who’s going to distribute non-collector’s Toys now? Like, you can easily get statues and the like online, but what about the TMNT, Pokémon, etc stuff? Is that just gonna be set to the wayside?

Best Buy?

Though so much for "we're just downsizing". RIP.

Hm. I have $100 in Gift Cards. Guess I'll order something online asap.

I'm gonna miss the environment that is Toys-R-Us, but I don't think superstores dedicated solely to toys is as practical as it once was. With online shopping and toys seemingly having less long-term appeal than before, it might be better to having smaller shops covering a wider area. When I was just a spore, Toys 'R Us was a joy to go to but an absolute pain to get out of. The queues were horrendous, the service was consistently awful, and there wasn't another toy shop like it unless you went to another major city, which wasn't practical just to get a single Action Man and an alien egg.

If I want Toys-to-Life now I have three options: the woeful stock available in Argos, the woeful stock in Smyths (though the shelves are absolutely packed with ordinary normie toys), or eBay. If I want ordinary toys for people who don't like video games, then I have to go to Smyths or eBay. If I want collector's tat, GAME or eBay. I think you can see a trend.

I lament the loss of Toys Am We (as my dad called it), but I hold out hope that people can get their hands on stock that's not available in their country and bring it to those who couldn't get it before. Nobody should have to go without a boxed Enigma.

Yeah, I knew something was up. I kept missing waves of MLP: Equestria Girls toys and a few other stuff like the last couple waves of TMNT. All stuff that used to be found everywhere at any store but lately none of it never reaches the shelves around here. Not even Target or Walmart! Lately these things have been appearing on Ebay/Amazon at 3 times markup which baffled me as I never saw any of it locally and I'm always out looking for them. I finally discovered a pre-order toy source online which puts a very small mark up over retail on the stuff I was buying locally so it works out, but still I miss getting these thing locally.

I wonder if a smaller KB Toys type toy store would work in this day and age? Probably not as Gamestop and FYE is almost a toy store these days themselves. No one seems to shop locally really. I don't blame them if you cannot ever find what you want other than online.

toys r RIP

Sad but curious, since in Europe it's doing well.

Well after the ones in the UK now closing down with ones being completely shut down from this week, it's honestly not surprising sadly, honestly in regards to the company now as a adult I'm not sad to see it go, toys r us were always overpriced (especially with skylanders giants here with their exclusives they charged at least £2 more for a single legendary and the triple pack if I remember correctly was £5 more, other figures may of also been higher in price but hard to remember after what 5 years now?), as a kid I loved the place, also held the original distribution for celebi on Pokémon gold and silver, right outside my local store, and then again for mew for fire red/ leaf green....

All i feel sorry for is the main bulk of the staff in stores/warehouses and at any offices, however I do not feel sorry for the upper management, they are the ones who have let their employees down, and honestly are the sole reason for the fact toys r us will probably go under worldwide, by not being competitive enough with their pricing, people would rather either use the internet for their purchases or go to Smyth's toys here for example due to their better pricing.

And that's not all our closing down sale is around 25%-30% off depending on the type of item being sold, and there was at least 9 found of still being more overpriced than at other retailers... Lego and other companies are having stock recalled to them at present too, so less in stores and the website here is no longer being allowed to be used for sales. Here alone I feel sorry for the at least 3,200 people who work across around 160 stores who are about to start being made redundant... and on top of that not all of them will get their full pension from the retailer, those over a certain age (think it was around 40/50 years old) will receive their full pension, those under the age at the time the action was put in place at the end of last year will receive 90% of it, 10% may not seem like a lot but it all adds up.

It's sad to see it go in regards to the company being in the UK for 33 years and 61 in the US, but honestly expected just due to the fact they are overpriced and there are now so many alternatives to the retailer, weather its online or via other, more competitively priced retailers...

I'm honestly surprised TRU have been able to keep going for as long as they have especially with the internet becoming so dominant over the past decade for shopping, but nothing lasts forever, Claire's supposedly going the same way in the US at least right now, here we are also losing Maplin stores which have been very tech focused stores, now if we can just lose GAME this time round that be great... (would feel sorry for the staff but the company is way too expensive in general in the retail environment) honestly wish they hadn't got saved/bought out at the 11th hour during when they were in administration themselves 6 years ago. At the end of the day I don't see much of a future for retail apart from online/highly focused areas that are meant to be to attract people to like in the west end in London.... Internet is sadly far more convenient, sorry if this post was too long by the way for my first post in a long time, I kinda of got carried away.

(off topic but the title of this topic reminds me of a certain dating sim)

And it's official.. All USA & UK TRU's going away. I guess that the Canada, Australia and asian country TRU's will remain open with business as usual.

35K people losing their jobs by the end of this. Bummer.

This bites. So what about the more high end action figures that Walmart and Target don't sell? Like Masterpiece Transformers or the Legacy Power Rangers collection? Will they even be released at physical retail anywhere?

press f to pay respects

Legendary Skylanders are gonna skyrocket in price in the next year or two.

So, do we know when all stores will be closed down for good? I hear by the end of April they'll all be gone.

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

So, do we know when all stores will be closed down for good? I hear by the end of April they'll all be gone.

April in the UK, by the end of the year supposedly in the US (who get a far better sale overall 50% off whilst 25-30% for UK), I'd expect the rest of the stores worldwide to eventually crash....as Asian Toys R Us TRU US has a 85% stake in as the parent company, so expect to see the rest in Europe to crash soon honestly and then probably Asia.... who in Japan are opening mini stores to try and fight the threat looming them according to this article: https://asia.nikkei.com/Busine...rent-liquidates

If Toys R US get bought out in each different branch it would actually make things harder, as the buyer would have to ask for permission from the parent company in the US to use the name, its why the UK ones are crashing quicker than the loss of the dodo.... another link to that here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43401674?

This really feels like Woolworths all over again, but unlike Toys R Us they were actually reasonably priced..... and competitive, I miss the store that used to be on my high road, sigh...

KB Toys might be coming back
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...y-ellia-kassoff

Can you hear the back flipping dogs?

There can be only one.

save us kb

All of the clearance sales at all TRU's starts today. Seen some pics of nearly empty shelves in some stores already. The prices, I have read, are not that great.....yet.

all stores should be closed by the end of june.

sayo-nara, TRU.

WE BETTER GET MY CAR FIXED BY THEN DAMMIT! I GOTTA GO!

This is interesting timing...

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/2...uary/index.html

The stress of the chain crashing & burning was too much I guess.

Stories claim that the entire issue is the interest from loans taken out decades ago and if those loans did not exist (and have super high interest payments) TRU would have been profitable in 2017. interesting.

update: I visited my local TRU and it was SAD. Most price reductions were 5% (that's right 5%!). Video games were 15% off (and mostly wiped out) except for 40 copies of Switch Skyrim - lol. I was expecting something like 35-50% off on everything. Oh well.

I guess a billionaire offered $675MM for a number of USA stores and $200+MM for some Canadian stores but was rejected. :-\

Time is running out... Today's email:

aaaand that's it...

I think mine closes today or will do so tomorrow? I'm sure if I went back it'd be down to dust so I won't bother. I was there two days ago and the wall of neverending Skylanders vehicles was dropped down to 20 cents and I was surprised to see that most of them sold. Some fool probably bought 100s of them thinking to flip them on ebay. Good luck with that!

Either way, I honestly didn't expect to get anything but I did get a few goodies including a pair of Marvel Madame Alexander Collection Spider-Gwen Dolls which retailed at an astonishingly overpriced $89.99 for $15 each. They are currently everywhere online for around $35 due to flippers but I was really happy about getting one for my friend and one for myself. There was another character that I had wanted but she obviously sold sometime in the last 10 days as they had a few dozen of these things.



I do hope that some replacement toy chain will be in place if they ever revive Skylanders as TRU was the only reliable place for them. Target got picked over fast, Walmart just stopped carrying them (or they would only get a couple cases which would sell out instantly), and Gamestop is always a laugh and is rumored to be in serious trouble as well. Plus it was nearly impossible to get half of the Skylanders online as stores just wouldn't list them and ultimately Amazon and Ebay was the only place to get them...at 3 times the price. Actually this is true for most toys now days. It's become a real collectors market rather than playthings for kids. I wouldn't mind it so much if Walmart just carried a better selection in and not skip out on entire waves of just about everything which makes reasonable collecting impossible these days.

And just like that it's gone, huh? Feels so strange. I went shopping for some Transformers at ToysRus shortly before I left the US earlier this year, and it seemed so alive and well. Now when I eventually go back ToysRus will be just a distant memory.

There was a rummage sale today and of course TRU was on the way home so I just had to stop for one last final time. Got something like $250+ in Lightseekers stuff at 90% off. I figure that's about what they are worth, assuming one can even still play the game. LOL I had promised myself I would get some on discount and it doesn't get cheaper than this!

I think they were at least 3 years too late to the party but it seems that the card game for Lightseekers is doing well enough and they are planning an online card app game soon. The figures are in limbo and I think they are simply dead but won't admit to it. That's a shame as I really wanted a Mei, I mean an ELARA, very much.




Skylanders wise, they are down to about 5 Splatter Splashers which is amazing considering they had over a thousand vehicles last week. Bye Bye TRU!

I stopped by my local TRU last night and only the very front of the store was open. The rest was taped off and all that was left was a HUGE amount of these Sharper Image tiny drones (orig $60, now $12), some Animal Crossing Amiibos, some generic batteries and a few greeting cards. Most eveything else are gone. The mood inside the store from employees seemed really depressed.

Such sadness.

Oh, they did have a bunch of the Yo-Kai watches for $2/ea...lol

So I was out on a walk last weekend and I found out that ToysRus is actually still open here in South Korea.



Unfortunately they don't have the same toylines as an American ToysRus, so no Ninja Turtles or Star Wars. And Toys to Life never existed over here whatsoever. They seem to have Super Sentai rather than Power Rangers, so there's no Legacy Power Rangers line either. But they have a TON of transforming robot toylines:







https://i.imgur.com/jTtMDWV.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/U0cgLeT.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/2U3rCk4.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Njtpviz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tyTCZy6.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/X6veRLI.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/LKCHBY4.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/nlPplYi.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/s2buzJY.jpg

Gundam and Pokemon are also both really popular:





https://i.imgur.com/YwRy7na.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/xbiWFIb.jpg

And I kind of want this Pikachu toy...




All in all, it's nice knowing ToysRus still lives on in some parts of the world.

holy **** that silvally figure

Quote: ZapNorris

holy **** that silvally figure

Thought you didnt like Silvally?

Quote: HeyitsHotDog

Quote: ZapNorris

holy **** that silvally figure

Thought you didnt like Silvally?

he's grown on me

The last time I went into TRU was to see if it it had the Switch before I got it from a starter bundle at GameStop via order. R.I.P. TRU in the US. You will be missed. At least it's still around in some parts of the world, so that's good.

Also, I absolutely love those Pokemon figures. They look really dope!

Well, what do you know.... Looks like TRU is akin to Jesus after all.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/10/...rand/index.html

Still sad..

Man, I should go visit that Toys-R-Us again and see if they have new stuff.