tzikeh:

siphersaysstuff:

therobotmonster:

captainsnoop:

some people: omg… epic nostalgia fail… right in the childhood. guess a kid can’t be a kid anymore

people who have bought a toy in the last ten years: good fucking riddance to that dump and its insane markups. 

I’m in both camps. TRU’s prices were nuts at times, but it was the only outlet for a lot of stuff, and there’s something deeply sad about the death of the last of the chain toy stores. 

people who actually looked into why it’s shutting down and not just smugly jerking off to their own selfishness: Toys R Us was saddled with thoroughly insurmountable debt by the exact same venture capitalists who tanked Kay-Bee Toys and numerous other retail chains. They took a company that was struggling, bought it, then leveraged that buyout almost wholly into a $5 billion debt on the company that was virtually impossible for them to cover, something that should be illegal because it’s absolutely ruining the economy by just funneling money into the coffers of the already-super-rich while destroying competition that helps keep prices all over down. TRU’s model was actually successful and under normal circumstances they’d be recovering fine, but that debt was never going to go away and sucked up pretty much any profit the company made. Needing to clean up that debt, by the way, is also a factor in TRU’s prices, as well as Walmart not needing to make a profit off of toys, making them “loss leaders” by selling them at minimal profit because they make their real money elsewhere in the store but using those loss leaders to lure people in. Also TRU accounted for roughly 15% of the sales from major toymakers like Hasbro, Mattel and Lego, and this will hurt all of them (especially because now Walmart has even MORE leverage and market share and they are notoriously vicious with how they treat suppliers, plus the scummy Amazon), and god knows what this is going to do to many smaller companies who relied on TRU’s orders and distribution for their wares that Walmart wouldn’t carry. Plus this is thousands and thousands of jobs lost in a poor economy, but hey, you sometimes might have had to pay a little bit more for a hunk of fucking plastic you didn’t fucking need so who’s the real victim here?

BTW the venture capitalists who just destroyed Toys R Us? Bain Capital, brought to you by Mitt Romney, who is looking into running for Congress.

You’re welcome.