Toys "R" Us Has Canceled Its Bankruptcy Auction - A Possible Return?

HA! they just wanted fame. perfect way to grab the public's attention

TRU wasn't doing well

Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I cannot stress how close to meaningless all this is. All they have is just a name they do not want to sell yet.

Also, seriously, do you anericans miss toysrus? Not the toysrus of your childhoods, i mean the store you could have walked into last year. Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

william-james88 wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I cannot stress how close to meaningless all this is. All they have is just a name they do not want to sell yet.

Also, seriously, do you anericans miss toysrus? Not the toysrus of your childhoods, i mean the store you could have walked into last year. Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

Honestly, I just miss it because it was part of my childhood. Every single time I went there it felt like Christmas. What I'm hoping for is that maybe they'll just transfer fully to an online business. Trying to go back to brick-and-mortar would most likely bankrupt them again. I just want ToysRUs back in some form.

william-james88 wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I cannot stress how close to meaningless all this is. All they have is just a name they do not want to sell yet.

Also, seriously, do you anericans miss toysrus? Not the toysrus of your childhoods, i mean the store you could have walked into last year. Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

I kinda do, next to KB Toys, as a pure dedicated toy store like you'd see back in Europe, only a lot bigger.

That said, it's not uncommon to reuse a personally owned trademark for a new start-up, but given the current state of affairs I wouldn't be surprised if they started small in a single area, and not go nation-wide from the get-go, or be the same as it once was.

Hope floats. My childhood may not have died completely after all.

I remember calling TRU when I was a kid pleading with them to open a store near me. The next year they did and I have been loyal to them since then. Being CDN we are fine as TRU still exists here, but for you down south I hope its Phoenix will rise again.

william-james88 wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I cannot stress how close to meaningless all this is. All they have is just a name they do not want to sell yet.

Also, seriously, do you anericans miss toysrus? Not the toysrus of your childhoods, i mean the store you could have walked into last year. Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

Before my son and daughter I didn't go into Toys R Us as often (unless I knew about exclusives). With my kids it was sharing the experience I had as a child with my dad. My son is now 4, but during before they went away they brought out play areas to "test drive" toys and he enjoyed every min of it. Many times we would go in, but never buy a toy, he enjoyed just going through the isles pressing buttons and playing. It's not the fact it's gone that had made me sad, it was the experience of bringing in my kids like my dad and sharing that.

And while people complained (people I speak with as well) about the prices. My wife and I never had an issue. We would show them what Wal-mart priced them at and they would lower the price as well. That's just my take.

Whether it comes back or not, if it does that would be awesome, but I'm passed that point where if it didn't that would be fine as well since my son was young enough not to really remember.

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

oh gods
please...

william-james88 wrote: Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

I don't have a Predaking on Layaway, so yes.

william-james88 wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I cannot stress how close to meaningless all this is. All they have is just a name they do not want to sell yet.

Also, seriously, do you anericans miss toysrus? Not the toysrus of your childhoods, i mean the store you could have walked into last year. Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

Homestly, It would've been a great distributor for the Transformers TCG, because I don't know about you, but here in central Florida, finding card packs is a pain.

TheTfboy wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I cannot stress how close to meaningless all this is. All they have is just a name they do not want to sell yet.

Also, seriously, do you anericans miss toysrus? Not the toysrus of your childhoods, i mean the store you could have walked into last year. Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

Homestly, It would've been a great distributor for the Transformers TCG, because I don't know about you, but here in central Florida, finding card packs is a pain.

I really would not know, that is a hobby i dont participate in.

Since it is a potential hedge fund take over ...take this as a much ado about nothing.Also, it's IGN. Garbage tier site(a far cry from its glory days)

Hedge funds are like locusts (I'm pro capitalist) but I can use a sad example of how one hedge fund (under Mittens) killed Valiant Comics( the one under Jim Shooter) after their "cash infusion" into the company.

Valiant after the cash infusion was doing great already. Great stories and sales(those where the mid 90s) but once the "profit target" were achieved by the hedge fund, they just pulled out and left Valiant in to dry.

In TRU, there were various factors that killed it but one sore sticking point is that hedge fund involvement they gotten into.

I think if major toy companies backed TRU and they listened to customers/ran their business properly then they would have a grand success.

william-james88 wrote:

Decepticon Stryker wrote:Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease

I cannot stress how close to meaningless all this is. All they have is just a name they do not want to sell yet.

Also, seriously, do you anericans miss toysrus? Not the toysrus of your childhoods, i mean the store you could have walked into last year. Have your purchasing habits been affected in anyway since it closed?

All are welcomed to respond.

Don't miss it at all. TRU died in the late '90s, early '00s. That I miss, but what we've had the last 15 or so years sucked.

More or less, just like what happened to Kenny Rogers "chicken", that gig was at its apex in the late 80s. When it folded (I believe only one is left in California), a Chinese Malaysian company bought the name and is now doing well in South East Asia.

Maybe the owners are holding out for a bigger offer from fat wallet Mainland China Investors to buy out the name?

WreckerJack wrote:Toys 'R' Us may make a return. According to IGN Toys 'R' Us has canceled it's bankruptcy auction. What this means is Toys 'R' Us is planning a revival of the brand. Toys 'R' Us closed their doors earlier this year in the US. The Wall Street Journal has the details of their plan which includes opening and operating in person stores. Things seem to be early in speculation for now so we can't draw too many conclusions just yet. We here at Seiberton will be crossing our fingers that things turn out. We will give you all of the details as they happen.

I hoped for their return as a long-time customer, let us pray for a miracle.

Toys R Us Rebrands as Geoffrey’s Toy Box?
Published 1 day ago on October 4, 2018 By Ashley Wilbanks

News broke a few days ago that Toys R Us was cancelling their pending bankruptcy plans, with plans to reemerge in the marketplace. Just how and when that comeback would take place was still a mystery, until now.

Geoffrey the Giraffe was spotted at the Fall Toy Preview in Dallas sporting a “Back from Vacation” cape, which made a few headlines on Twitter and Linkedin. This led to a little Internet snooping, which turned up the following information…

Geoffrey’s Toy Box will launch consumer locations across the country this coming November as a “shop-within-a-shop” concept, initially partnering with “a prominent Midwest retailer.”

The new venture, for now, is being operated out of the Toys R Us headquarters building in Wayne, New Jersey, where a small number of former Toys R Us executives and employees continue to report to work.

How will Toys R Us succeed in a marketplace that has changed dramatically in a few short months? Amazon and Walmart are starting a huge push to replace the failed toy company. Walmart plans to add dedicated space for pop culture collectibles in the coming weeks, and Amazon has been signing exclusive rights for various toy lines (like Funko’s Primal Age line).

As always, leave your thoughts in the appropriate places…

ABOUT GEOFFREY’S TOY BOX:
Wholesale toy distributor and intellectual property company whose focus is on popular play patterns across trusted brands that kids and parents love. Geoffrey’s Toy Box is a fully outfitted organization with design, development and global sourcing expertise. Portfolio includes popular brands like Journey Girls, Fastlane, True Heroes, You & Me, Imaginarium, Just like Home and more!

Source :USA Today

https://dccollectors.com/2018/10/04/toys-r-us-rebrands-as-geoffreys-toy-box/

We had covered the other day a story about the ongoing troubles of international toy retail chain Toys R Us, in which a return of the store to the US had been advanced by the company on a number of outlets. You can read that again here, but also integrated with some further details below.

According to USA Today, TRU is planning on a series of strategies to remain as a presence, including keeping Geoffrey the giraffe as its mascot, using pop up locations, and changing the name to Geoffrey's Toy Box. The full article here details further what is happening, including the short term business plan, and the presence of Solus Alternative Asset Management and Angelo Gordon funds behind the new company, plus some worker discontent at the latter, and how the new Geoffrey LLC owns the name for TRU and Babies R Us in all countries except Canada. Read more below!

They are also saying they hope to have pop-ups in place inside the stores of a regional mass merchant in time for the holidays, and to relaunch Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores down the road.

Geoffrey's Toy Box introduced itself to toy manufacturers and sellers Tuesday at the opening of the Dallas toy show, with an exhibit booth and a costumed Geoffrey mascot, who was spotted wearing a cape with the words "Back from Vacation." Toy manufacturers at the show were tweeting and posting on LinkedIn that they had spotted Geoffrey and Richard Barry, the former chief merchandising officer at Toys R Us who appears to be heading the new venture for the investors.

The new venture, for now, is being operated out of the Toys R Us headquarters building in Wayne, New Jersey, where a small number of former Toys R Us executives and employees continue to report to work.

That actually sounds a lot like what Amazon is doing, having "brick and mortar" locations inside other stores. I'd think that the larger chains would welcome that as a potential boon: they'd make money off the space and not have to actually purchase the product to put there. And GTB won't have to have the outlay of funding their own building. With the Internet, the days of stand-alone toy stores is likely done but this seems like a very viable alternative.

THe downside is that the space would be smaller as would the selection, potentially. I suspect they would have a robust online presence and selection, but minimal real-world footprint.