GOODBYE: The Last Two Toys R Us Stores Follow Blockbuster To Graveyard Of '90s Retail Icons

I went over to the mall-area here in SE Pa and literally half of the stores in the strip malls were shuttered.

I went over to best buy for something and they had the entrance roped off and this dude was just standing there looking at his phone and I had to ask to be let in.

Once I was in, I noticed that half of the shelves were empty, half of the tv's were missing from the wall-displays...

Retail is fucked, we are about to see some interesting times.

What a lot of people don't think about is that
going to the store, especially to malls, and the like are part of the social experience, it's healthy to socialize and be around others, although most people don't know it
the folks that created the modern mall concept orginally did it to recapture the atmosphere of town centers and the first priority was for a social gathering place, RETAIL and sales were second!

amazon ie eyeing for a toy division so they'll buy them.

I miss roaming through video stores.

Keeping an iconic US retail outlet toy store going!

Good move for Amazon

As the article pointed out, you can still roam through the last remaining Blockbuster store in Bend, Oregon -- before Antifa burns it down, that is.

I liked CompUSA.
I think they're gone too.

I liked CompUSA.
I think they're gone too.

Well, at least things like the NFL, NBA and MLB are still really good and friendly.

Oh, wait.

Well, at least TV shows and movies are still really good and friendly.

Oh, wait.

Well, at least schools, education and Silicon Valley are really good and friendly.

Oh, wait.

Well, at least institutions like the Boy Scouts of America and most churches are really good and friendly.

Oh, wait.

Well, at least public libraries are really good and have friendly storybook times for young children.

Oh, wait.

Thanks, liberals/leftists/libtards, for all that you do and all that you are. You're really wonderful and really beautiful. Thanks again.

that blockbuster in oregon, the last one, is RAKING it in, making fucking bank. you can rent it out for adult sleepovers and shit, i think video stores are gonna come back, look how many followers cinemassacre has, and 2 stores.

I loved toys r us

Best Buy in my area is hurting,about half stocked.Gonna miss them.Nice people working there.NOT economically fucked,NOT rural .Just surrounded by suburban KARENS who order everything online.Anazon vans roam the neighborhood all day.Retail is collapsing and so is the tax base and those second income jobs that kept many families above water.The closer you get to the city the worse it gets.Rural areas went to shit years ado when taxes drove away all the factories and corps bought up all the farms.Now it's the cities turn.Angry millenials and gangbangers only destroy shit.

Last Two Toys R Us Stores Follow Blockbuster to Graveyard of '90s Retail Icons

BY STEPHEN KRUISER
February 03, 2021 12:11 AM ET


The American retail landscape has been undergoing a rapid makeover in the past twenty years.

Here is one of the bigger stories that can be filed under “Bittersweet” in the old memory cabinet:

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Here’s more from NBCChicago.com:

Toys R Us has closed the only two stores it had left in the United States.

The iconic toy retailer made the decision as a result of the hardships brought on by the Covid pandemic and plans to shift resources toward opening new locations where there is better shopper traffic, a spokesperson told CNBC in an emailed statement.

“Consumer demand in the toy category and for Toys R Us remains strong and we will continue to invest in the channels where the customer wants to experience our brand,” the person said.

Obviously, I was not a kid when Toys R Us was humming along during its heyday. The reason that this tugs at the heart is that my kid was a kid then. It wasn’t a weekly destination shopping place, of course. It was a special occasion kind of place. The only things that could light a young kid’s eyes up bigger than entering a Toys R Us were seeing the presents on Christmas morning or walking into Disneyland.

Full disclosure: few things get my eyes to light up bigger than Disneyland. I’m nine again as soon as I approach the entrance.

When my daughter was young in the early aughts, a fair number of those Christmas presents were from Toys R Us. Yeah, we had the Amazon option back then but it hadn’t quite eclipsed the adrenaline rush of surviving in-person Christmas shopping at Toys R Us. It was always quite the holiday adventure. Getting to the closest one to me in Los Angeles involved hitting the 405 in the LAX traffic vicinity.

That’s never pleasant.

Then I had to deal with a shrunken L.A. parking lot that the store shared with a Home Depot and a couple of other big-box stores.

Still, I loved it because I knew that I was going to be done shopping when I left there. And I do mean done.

As I was writing that I remembered that there was one closer to me but with such horrible surface street traffic leading to it that I avoided it. I also apparently blocked it out of my memory for a bit.

There is no doubt some revisionist history going on here. I have only one child and she is an adult now and my empty nest mental meanderings about her youth tend towards the sugar-coated. Had you been able to corral me as I was leaving Toys R Us a week before Christmas I would probably not be the bundle of holiday cheer that I’m now remembering.

It still amazes me how much has changed just since my daughter was a young girl. She’s only 22 now, so we’re not exactly talking eons ago. I mentioned Blockbuster in the headline because that was another retail/entertainment fact of life from my daughter’s childhood that vanished seemingly overnight.

Her mother and I divorced when she was very young. The custody arrangement we settled on pretty much split up every week. We’d each get some school night parenting time and she’d spend Friday nights at her mom and stepdad’s house and Saturdays with me. When she was 6 we moved into a place in West L.A. that was close to a Blockbuster. Saturdays then became “Daddy/Daughter Movie Night.” We’d go to Blockbuster early and pick out a movie (or two) then go to dinner at our favorite little Italian restaurant a block from our place, then watch the movie.

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Be real with me. You are so fucking jaded that you aren't credible. Karens, angry millenials, and gang bangers? Lots of generalization and conjecture on your part. The closer you get to the city the more proof I'm going to need of your claims, because they are nearly impossible to observe with the naked eye and without data. For instance, it is much more natural for smaller towns to have a chain restaurant as opposed to mom and pop (subway, mcdonalds, and applebees, jesus christ) establishment. In these situations, for businesses, there is a much smaller ceiling (and depending on competition, lower floor even. you don't want to open a burger king in a small town that has an in and out). These towns should be thanking their fucking stars and stripes that a country that can produce a company as lucrative and efficient as amazon. you're fucking welcome that you don't have to go to best buy anymore, that place fucking blows. find something better to do with your time, and something better to bitch about. i'm so sick of this woe-is-me-the-american-conservative-who-got-the-election-stol​en-from-us mentality. you know what? most of us don't give a shit. seriously, most swing votes didn't fucking vote. so shut the fuck up. this is about an era of no more, not politics. its about nostalgia, that memory you think of at your pillow. it wasn't ruined by biden or obama or trump, so shut the motherfucking hell up. can nothing be sacred to you? can you not remember a time when you weren't such a bitter politically driven personality with a cynical opinion on *literally* *every* *topic*?

sorry, i'm using you as an example. i'm about to stop lurking here. after ten years lurking, i started posting a few days ago. i'm so fucking fed up with this shit, i did not wittingly make myself a part of a political community. you people turned this into a political community because you're so fucking easily influenced (that trinifag post with trump and the pistol, get the fuck in, maga post is when everything changed, and it shows how much influence one person can have on a shitshow of people who are desperate to believe anything they read in their favor). you ppl need to reevaluate why you have the opinions you do. im ashamed to even read this site now. stfu with trump, jesus fucking christ. again, sorry to the poster whom i'm quoting and generalizing the fuck out of. love you all, just losing respect for so many here. still love, less respect.

As the article pointed out, you can still roam through the last remaining Blockbuster store in Bend, Oregon -- before Antifa burns it down, that is.

Amazon killed the Toy-R-Us stores.