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Toy-R-Us liquidating

Last posted Mar 22, 2018 at 09:28PM EDT. Added Mar 11, 2018 at 09:24AM EDT
20 posts from 13 users

BLoomberg and other news outlets are reporting on that the toy giant may be closing as soon as next week due to poor sales. They went bankrupt last year and haven't been able to reverse their poor sales. If they do close down this would negatively impact a already struggling toy industry because Toys-R-Us is responsible for 15% of the toy industry sales and the toy industry had only a 1% growth profits wise last year; essentially if this does turn out to be true we may see the toy industry as a whole take a massive downturn profits wise. Many are citing failure to sell Star Wars toys as the death nail in the coffin saying stuff like "Star Wars is for old people now. Kids who didn't grow up with Star Wars don't want to play with Star Wars; their parents buy those toys for themselves to reminiscence about their childhood."

Alex>_> wrote:

Reminds me of when Block Buster/Hollywood Video were practically giving away games and movies. (To us older users…)

This is the kind of shit that makes a person who's only 21 feel like an old man.

Used to Love TRU because I love LEGO and Bionicle. They used to have some older stuff at really deep discount (in 2004-2005 got a $10 set for less than a dollar, two $80 sets for $40s together, and a $60 Spider-Man set for $5. Granted Lego wasn't doing great at the time but I didn't know that). Also visited a TRU during my last day in Germany and got a whole bunch of old sets I had missed out on that had been discontinued for several years in the states that I still cherish to this day. Even not including sales they would also have exclusives you could not easily get elsewhere.

But then things started to change. While they are usually better about having old inventory than say Wal-Mart or other places, in the last decade, they would have a noticeable markup. One set I considered getting a few years at there because it was discontinued elsewhere was normally $30, and instead of being on sale, it had a $10 mark up. Most of their "sales" I've seen for LEGO in the past few years just lowered the price downed to MRP.

So yeah, mid 2000's TRU I have many fond memories of and it is disappointing that I will likely never have those experiences again. On the other hand, they have made a point with mark up and limited sales that these kind of experiences would never happen again anyways.

What's worse is that I'm not going to even be able to visit a TRU soon if they actually do good deals if and when they shutdown to even get that one last hurrah.

TBH I'm just waiting for the store closings sales. I think the last time I actually bought something in a TRU was 2013 maybe because they had an exclusive set. Toy prices just get too crazy and their markup doesn't help. Hoping I can snag a Switch and maybe a few games for a good discount.

Edit: Just realized those exclusives might actually be worth some money soon thanks to this.

Last edited Mar 11, 2018 at 11:52PM EDT

With the advent of internet stores, retail outlets for specific things have sort of become redundant. In the next few years I expect Gamestop to follow suit since they're also struggling to maintain relevancy.

yummines wrote:

With the advent of internet stores, retail outlets for specific things have sort of become redundant. In the next few years I expect Gamestop to follow suit since they're also struggling to maintain relevancy.

Sales for physical copies of games have been in general declining. A prime example of this is at my local walmart the video game section is mainly preorder cards.

So it's official; they're closing all of their USA locations. This move will cost tens of thousands of people their jobs. 800 stores will close.

Skeletor-sm

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