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Kurona wrote:I think Karyuudo may have been right with his first point. I see kids playing a lot more with iPhones and gaming devices than toys; including my own niece and nephew. I think something important to point out though is that while they won't stop getting toys... they'll be more likely to put more of their money towards electronic goods and/or ask their parents more for those than toys.

With my kids for example, we did do the toy thing with them until they were around 3 years old... of which they gravitated quickly to tablet / console games. Now that they're both 11 and 7, they have zero interest in purchasing toys... yet alone the thought about playing with them. It's all about using the tablet, and a very mild interest in watching cartoons at all. It wasn't until this past year that my oldest even cared about watching anything Star Wars related. While he does enjoy the movies and is casually watching the Tv series, he has no interest in the toys. I'm not sure if my situation is just an extreme case of things, but I'd be interested in hearing about what other parents have experienced.

karyuudo, your story makes me cry. I remember so fondly the joy I had playing with toys at 8 years old and going to a store to pick a new one up. My little one is 2 and loves toys (as well as drawing) but that could all fade away quite soon, I dont know. She does love disney movies though and books so who knows.

william-james88 wrote:karyuudo, your story makes me cry. I remember so fondly the joy I had playing with toys at 8 years old and going to a store to pick a new one up. My little one is 2 and loves toys (as well as drawing) but that could all fade away quite soon, I dont know. She does love disney movies though and books so who knows.

Things have honestly changed in the way kids play now. No longer do they need plastic /die cast representations of their favorite characters, but being able to play those characters through tablet / console games has more meaning now. I'm sure that there'll always be kids out there who want some kind of toy of their favorite character, but companies might have to change the way they market them to get them off the shelves.

Going back to the child birth part of this topic, I'd be interested to see how Toys R Us Japan is doing, and whether the declining child birth rate (because we KNOW that's definitely an issue there) is affecting sales and such.

I highly doubt TRU is going anywhere, they are they only toy store around afterall. If things are bad theyll close some stores worst case scenario they'll become an online retailer. But if they were to go under i wouldnt shed a tear, the company has gone to crap and i barely shop there as it is cause the prices are to high and the selection sucks(i mean none existent). My advice to the company: hire employees that care about the job/store/customer not just morons who will show up for a paycheck, send someone around to every store to inspect them and make sure shelves are stocked & customers are happy, and listen to the customer, a happy customer is a return customer.

Megatron Wolf wrote: My advice to the company: hire employees that care about the job/store/customer not just morons who will show up for a paycheck,

I think that would require a loooooooooot more changes than just changing who they hire, starting with increasing the minimum wage to at least $15 to be livable. That gets into a whole other discussion about how corporations treat their employees, which I won't get into as it's off-topic.

I hope they pull through, I really love TRU and have respect for them, regardless of a few high prices here and there, they have the guts to bring us things like MP line and Titan class where other stores wimp out, they have satisfied my cravings for figures and video games many times in the past, some of my earliest memories finding TFs from the 80s were in TRU stores when they had huge aisles of the G1. If they go brankrupt I will seriously miss them, I suppose I've done my part keeping them afloat though, I will try to visit them more before the end of the year.

TRU rompstomped other toy retailers back in the 80's by seriously undercutting their prices so throughout the mid 80s/early 90s they were king. However Walmart caught on in the mid to late 90s and expanded their toy aisles for a while and began to to the same thing to TRU that TRU did to other toy retailers. TRU closed down a few stores starting in 2001. Its been a very slow decline but who knows we have so many choices these days who would worry if a brick and mortar chain goes.

bvzxa wrote: we have so many choices these days who would worry if a brick and mortar chain goes.

Only if you live in the USA.

toys r us is thee toy store, for the past 35-40 years thats the place to go, hope it will last another 40+ years

There has been a development in the Toysrus debt restructuring (and possible bankruptcy) story and it's not a positive one. A Bloomberg article has stated that while Toysrus is seeking a new loan, several retailers are cutting back shipments since if Toysrus does go the bankruptcy route, the vendors may not get paid for their supplies.

Suppliers pulled back in part because the cost to insure their shipments to cash-strapped Toys “R” Us has become too expensive, said the people. Vendors often rank among creditors with the lowest priority for getting repaid if a company seeks court protection, and their decision on whether to continue shipping goods can play a large role in determining a retailer’s fate.

However, and this is where this becomes very topical for any fan reading, Hasbro is not one of these suppliers. They will continue their operations just as before and provide Toysrus with the full shipments.

Hasbro Inc. is among toymakers that hasn’t curtailed shipments, spokeswoman Julie Duffy wrote in an email. “We continue to partner and ship, conducting business as usual, while managing our risk across all retailers to the appropriate levels,” Duffy wrote.

Good to see Hasbro stepping up and not kicking Geoffrey when he's down! Gotta keep them exclusives coming.

Maybe now they'll have MPM's.

The optimist in me is hoping that there will be an expansion in TFs with more stock.

Of course that's unlikely, but a guy can hope.

I wonder if this explains why those other announced Titans Returns boxsets were cancelled?

Mkall wrote:The optimist in me is hoping that there will be an expansion in TFs with more stock.

Of course that's unlikely, but a guy can hope.

I wonder if this explains why those other announced Titans Returns boxsets were cancelled?

What most likely happened is that, presumably Walmart and Target, didn't want box sets. So they decided to package the diecast masters in special sets. Scorpinok will probably be announced by Christmas.

So many times in the past few months I've been willing to give Toys R Us money for Transformer figures but they've still not progressed past TLK Wave 1 and TR wave 3 here! Can't help them unless they stock what I want to buy.

EunuchRon wrote:Good to see Hasbro stepping up and not kicking Geoffrey when he's down! Gotta keep them exclusives coming.

In some ways this is good for Hasbro from a publicity standpoint. 1) they are seen as supportive, and definately if TRU does pull through TRU will remember that and maybe buy into more of Hasbro's offerings down the line. But with as many Tf movies aa are out there and other licensed stock, I dont doubt they weigh the value of having their products seen on shelves by customers against whether or not they get paid for that. Publicity and Visbility may not pay bills, but it helps the things that do.

Or maybe Hasbro just likes risks.

Flashwave wrote:

EunuchRon wrote:Good to see Hasbro stepping up and not kicking Geoffrey when he's down! Gotta keep them exclusives coming.

In some ways this is good for Hasbro from a publicity standpoint. 1) they are seen as supportive, and definately if TRU does pull through TRU will remember that and maybe buy into more of Hasbro's offerings down the line. But with as many Tf movies aa are out there and other licensed stock, I dont doubt they weigh the value of having their products seen on shelves by customers against whether or not they get paid for that. Publicity and Visbility may not pay bills, but it helps the things that do.

Or maybe Hasbro just likes risks.

Well, Hasbro does make risk.........

Terrsolpix wrote:

Flashwave wrote:

EunuchRon wrote:Good to see Hasbro stepping up and not kicking Geoffrey when he's down! Gotta keep them exclusives coming.

In some ways this is good for Hasbro from a publicity standpoint. 1) they are seen as supportive, and definately if TRU does pull through TRU will remember that and maybe buy into more of Hasbro's offerings down the line. But with as many Tf movies aa are out there and other licensed stock, I dont doubt they weigh the value of having their products seen on shelves by customers against whether or not they get paid for that. Publicity and Visbility may not pay bills, but it helps the things that do.

Or maybe Hasbro just likes risks.

Well, Hasbro does make risk.........

I... I totally walked right into that one...

Buh-dump bum.

Seeing as how we've no tru in Ireland and with the exclusives being far too frequent I'd be happy enough to see tru go. Opens up more stock to be more obtainable elsewhere.

Carnivius_Prime wrote:So many times in the past few months I've been willing to give Toys R Us money for Transformer figures but they've still not progressed past TLK Wave 1 and TR wave 3 here! Can't help them unless they stock what I want to buy.

Toysrus , Walmart , target, any other store sells toys they don't control what wave comes in its random lottery box set look how long before people where finding leader prime and megatron last knight toys.,

If people bought out all off toys in toysrus it's not enough retail stores make there money by having people signing up for store credit cards target credit cards, sears, bestbuy credit cards, if no one signs up hours get cut

dragons wrote:

Carnivius_Prime wrote:So many times in the past few months I've been willing to give Toys R Us money for Transformer figures but they've still not progressed past TLK Wave 1 and TR wave 3 here! Can't help them unless they stock what I want to buy.

Toysrus , Walmart , target, any other store sells toys they don't control what wave comes in its random lottery box set look how long before people where finding leader prime and megatron last knight toys.,

If people bought out all off toys in toysrus it's not enough retail stores make there money by having people signing up for store credit cards target credit cards, sears, bestbuy credit cards, if no one signs up hours get cut

Yeah I wasn't so much blaming Toys R Us but the toy distribution in general. I just don't get how so many stores haven't even had Wave 2 in yet but Argos have (I had Sqweeks and Voyager Megatron before most people). I like trips to Toys R Us. I just wish there was more on the shelves for me to make the trip worth taking. At least, unlike many stores here, they stock a good selection of Mega Blox/Construx as (as I've said before) I've got quite hooked on.

I found and bought Blitzwing from TRU yesterday, so I'm "doing my part."

As to the specific news, though, here's the way I see it. Hasbro has a vested interest in ensuring that Toys R Us does NOT fail. They need as many stores as possible to succeed so that they have more businesses to negotiate with.

Kmarts are pretty much gone now, and if TRU goes, that pretty much only leaves 2 ground level stores: Walmart and Target. Both stores are shrewd negotiators when it comes to what they sell. You basically do what they say, or they don't sell your product (and you do NOT want to lose an account as big as Walmart or Target).

I use to teach a pretty good article on this called "The Walmart you don't know" which you can read here if you like that shows their bullying policies: https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-m ... -dont-know

A company like Toys R Us, however, is different. They WANT as many different toys in their store as possible. People, after all, go to TRU for toys, specifically. If TRU doesn't carry an item, people complain.

It's not just Transformers that TRU sells from Hasbro either. They have MLP, Disney Princess, Star Wars, Marvel, Jurassic Park... That's a lot of dough!

So there's this guy making $5 US earbuds. He invests another $.05 per headphone in little plastic disks that look like the Autobot logos and glues one each to each earbud. He then uses his Bombshell mind powers to convince a TRU exec to buy them for $7 each, then TRU tries to sell them to me for $10 rather than buy, and put on the shelves, ACTUAL TRANSFORMERS. That i would give them money for! I hope that TRU suit gets FIRED FIRED FIRED during the debt restructuring.

Flashwave wrote:

EunuchRon wrote:Good to see Hasbro stepping up and not kicking Geoffrey when he's down! Gotta keep them exclusives coming.

In some ways this is good for Hasbro from a publicity standpoint. 1) they are seen as supportive, and definately if TRU does pull through TRU will remember that and maybe buy into more of Hasbro's offerings down the line. But with as many Tf movies aa are out there and other licensed stock, I dont doubt they weigh the value of having their products seen on shelves by customers against whether or not they get paid for that. Publicity and Visbility may not pay bills, but it helps the things that do.

Or maybe Hasbro just likes risks.

I think Hasbro has no choice. The Power of the Prime was 1 is already done, with packaging and everything. Its been produced, same for all the remaining movie toys we havent seen (and there are TONS). And thats just Transformers as a small example of all the other stuff HAsbro already has produced for the holliday season for all their brands. TRU had already placed their orders and Hasbro had produced enough to fullfill them. Its too expensive for them not to fullfill their orders. If they sit on this huge stock instead, then they wont have any room left in their warehouses for whatever else they will be producing next and renting out more room for product that will go nowhere is worse than sunk cost of just burning all these toys (simply disposing of them would also be costly).

Fullfilling TRU's orders is their best strategy to lose as little money as possible. At least it can all be a sunk cost without them having to fork out more to dispose of these products in another way.