While I'm Thinking About It

Toys 'R' Us is over.

For awhile, at least. There's one plan to have the Canadian branch of the company (which is still alive and well) take over the hundred top-performing US stores*. Another involves a former executive buying the trademark and relaunching the company himself. If nothing else, someone will buy the name and slap it on their own stuff--see also Sharper Image, Polaroid, and TRU's own one-two punch of Imaginarium and FAO Schwartz.

But what killed the current incarnation?

I do not believe it was simply a corporate parent (Bain Capital, for those curious) more interested in short-term profits than long-term survival of an icon. But, even though that is part of it, had the customers kept coming in, the short-term profits would have been there.

Another part of the problem is a changing retail environment. Not the rise of Amazon, but the decision by Walmart and Target to put full groceries in their stores. If someone can pick up a gift for a kid at the same place their getting the ingredients for the cake, then why not? Especially if the gift ends up costing less there.

And that, to my mind, is the biggest factor, Toys 'R' Us never tried to compete on price. Their selling point was their selection. And in a market increasingly dominated by discounters, that's not a recipe for success.

It also doesn't help that their rebrandings were inconsist ently applied. "My" store got the vintage stripes taken down in favor of the blue grid facade during the Concept 2000 redoes. It stayed that way through the very end, even though the sign on the street got the 2007 update.

For the record, I came to like the 2007 logo, and used it as an inspiration in the new Toymania logo.

Elsewhere online there are galleries showing the striped facade painted blue. Inconsistent.

And, of course, there were the multiple redesigns of Geoffery the Giraffe.

*Back in the day, store 8005 in Clackamas, Oregon, would have been in that list. No idea if that was still true at the end.