Darth Richard II Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/video/toys-r-us-blames-bankruptcy-on-millennials-not-having-kids/vi-BBKqTA9?ocid=sf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
litechick Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 The only affection I have for TRU is that they had a truly spectacular jingle. I'm not sure that I ever entered a store but I can still get "I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid' stuck in my head. Analytically, I can see the appeal of an immersive fantasy environment, filling kids with wonder and desire of acquisition. I see the romance of the happy and prosperous family. However, kids today do not lack for immersive fantasy environments so what's the loss? For me, this is one of those privilege threads. I was not underprivileged but the idea that people went out on a random non-holiday for the express purpose of buying a non-essential item sort of drops my jaw. Go ahead and love on the toy store but don't be blind to the fact that a trip to TRU wherein a child gets to choose a toy is a story of remarkable riches for most people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 Heh, yeah, I don;t remember ever going there on any sort of non holiday related outing. I soon as I started getting disposable income of my own it was BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A True Kaniggit Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 Yo. Me and my brothers got our scooters cheap as hell at Toys R Us back in the day. One green, one blue, one red. Yeah, we were cool rolling up and down them streets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drawkcabi Posted March 21, 2018 Author Share Posted March 21, 2018 5 hours ago, litechick said: The only affection I have for TRU is that they had a truly spectacular jingle. I'm not sure that I ever entered a store but I can still get "I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid' stuck in my head. Analytically, I can see the appeal of an immersive fantasy environment, filling kids with wonder and desire of acquisition. I see the romance of the happy and prosperous family. However, kids today do not lack for immersive fantasy environments so what's the loss? For me, this is one of those privilege threads. I was not underprivileged but the idea that people went out on a random non-holiday for the express purpose of buying a non-essential item sort of drops my jaw. Go ahead and love on the toy store but don't be blind to the fact that a trip to TRU wherein a child gets to choose a toy is a story of remarkable riches for most people. During those years, 1984-1986, Saturday trips to Toys R Us was a thing at least once a month and I'd go in with a shopping cart and just fill it up with everything I wanted, my mom would gawk and sputter and say she can't buy me all that and I'd promise to be good and get better grades in school and she'd pull out her Am Ex. Spending ~$500.00 on toys on those trips was not an uncommon thing. My case goes beyond privileged to downright spoiled. But I knew it even then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drawkcabi Posted March 21, 2018 Author Share Posted March 21, 2018 MovieBob gets it too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
litechick Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 On 3/20/2018 at 11:23 PM, Darth Richard II said: Heh, yeah, I don;t remember ever going there on any sort of non holiday related outing. I soon as I started getting disposable income of my own it was BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS though. Here's my nostalgia kicking in... In elementary school I remember the first efforts at marketing to public school students where they would send home flyers of all the great books you could order to enhance your reading skills. I would circle all the books I wanted and present it to my parents with a 'I think we are supposed to do this' vibe like it was a permission slip they needed to sign or something. The answer was "No, we're not doing that." Nothing wrong with the library, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iskaral Pust Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 10 hours ago, litechick said: Here's my nostalgia kicking in... In elementary school I remember the first efforts at marketing to public school students where they would send home flyers of all the great books you could order to enhance your reading skills. I would circle all the books I wanted and present it to my parents with a 'I think we are supposed to do this' vibe like it was a permission slip they needed to sign or something. The answer was "No, we're not doing that." Nothing wrong with the library, though. I remember that too. And I remember some of the earliest pangs of economic anxiety when my parents told me they couldn't afford it. But we were regular visitors to the library. I would have appreciated greater frequency, but it was still pretty good. I hate marketing to kids because it puts pressure on parents but mostly because it abusively exploits immature minds in a way almost certainly will leave them with a negative residue. Most kids don't yet know how to control their acquisitive impulses and have not developed cynical shields against marketing. Kids have an innate attraction to novelty that is crucial to their cognitive and neural development, but little understanding of household economics. They generally feel an out-sized anxiety about anything that threatens their perception of their own well-being, e.g. being told the family cannot afford what they want. That natural, selfish biological instinct to secure their own well-being also makes them focus negatively and disproportionately on what they don't have -- all the advertised goodies, or stuff they see their friends owning. There are definitely good learning opportunities there for kids around appreciating what they have and recognizing the manipulative efforts of marketing, but most kids can't really handle that until long after their first exposure. So early marketing to kids is pretty much doomed to leave them feeling dissatisfied and potentially anxious about their dissatisfaction. Some get over-indulged to assuage their dissatisfaction and just defer the dissatisfaction to later in life when their desires are more expensive, others absorb the message that they'll never have the things they want or perhaps aren't worthy of them, some will shrug it off. But I hate the way the marketing attempts to reach the kids before most are ready to handle it well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fragile Bird Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 The NYT announced the founder of the store, Charles P. Lazarus, just died at the age of 94, of respiratory failure, at Mt. Sinai in NYC. A sad echo one week after the death of the store. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fiddler Posted April 4, 2018 Share Posted April 4, 2018 Toys R Us was always a mythical place to me as a child growing up in the 80's. I saw the giraffe commercials on Saturday morning. Looked through every inch of the christmas catalog that came out every year. I wanted to go to that store so bad. Alas, my mom was a Kmart shopper and Kmart was within 10 miles of us whereas the nearest Toys was almost 2 hours away. So, on those extremely rare occasions that we went there, it was always an adventure. We usually went out to dinner and then my parents would let me wander the store for as long as I wanted. One of my favorite childhood memories comes from a visit to Toys R Us. It was 1984 or so. The height of my He-Man obsession. Now Kmart always had a nice selection of He-man toys, but nothing like Toys R Us. On my eighth Birthday my parents gave me a fifty dollar bill and took me to Toys R Us to spend it. I was so excited. Unbeknownst to me, the Incredible Hulk and Spiderman were going to be there doing the picture and autograph thing, so when we arrived I became even more excited. It seemed like we were in the store for hours, probably only like 40 minutes, before I settled on my purchase. The Point Dread & Talon Fighter. It was a toy I had been wanting for a while, but K-mart never seemed to have. We then made our way to a buffet restaurant called Duffs and I was in heaven. I'm sad to see the stores close, but I haven't been in one in years, so it doesn't surprise me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
l2 0 5 5 Posted April 4, 2018 Share Posted April 4, 2018 Gonna miss it. I'll remembers bicycles, supersoakers and nerf footballs the most when I think of Toys R Us. I remember Nickelodeon having a contest where the winner got to go to Toys R Us and grab as many toys as possible and stuff them in a cart for like 5 minutes or something. I always thought that was the luckiest kid in the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fragile Bird Posted May 15, 2018 Share Posted May 15, 2018 Ha! Drawkcabi, you'll just have to come to Canada one day! The store has been saved in Canada... https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/04/24/toys-r-us-canada-fairfax_a_23419009/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martell Spy Posted October 3, 2018 Share Posted October 3, 2018 Why bankrupt Toys R Us might not be dead after all Toys R Us owners called off its bankruptcy auction. Could they be trying to revive the toy chain? https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/3/17932344/toys-r-us-liquidation-coming-back Quote Earlier this summer, the iconic American toy store Toys R Us closed almost all 800 of its stores. The brand was deep in debt and had filed for bankruptcy in September 2017. As part of the liquidation of assets, it had plans to auction off its intellectual property, including the company’s name, website, and its brand mascot, Geoffrey the Giraffe. Shoppers believed the beloved store was gone for good. Now, though, it seems Toys R Us might not die along with our childhood dreams after all: In court documents filed this week, which were first obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the company said it was going to abandon the sale of the Toys R Us name and branding, and hold on to them instead. On Tuesday, the company issued a press release, sharing that some of its existing owners — although it did not specify which ones — wanted to hold on to its intellectual property because they were currently drumming up ways to resurrect the brand “in a new and re-imagined way.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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