Toy stores are wondrous places for 8-year-olds and for the inner 8-year-old running amok in almost all of us.
In some warehouse stores — like Toys R Us — shelves burst with shiny new baubles that overwhelm the eye, and often the credit card.
The magic has faded for Toys R Us, which is planning to sell or close all its 735 U.S. stores. Executives blame the usual suspects — discounting and overbearing retailers like Walmart, gigantic internet competitors like Amazon.com. In other words, fierce competition. Many retailers are under the same intense pressure as Toys R Us. The retail landscape shifts quickly in the internet age. That’s not an omen for the future, just a fact.
Toys R Us capitalized on selection and price. But if its store presence dwindles, its customers’ toy options won’t. Hatchimals, Barbie, G.I. Joe, Star Wars light sabers, Hot Wheels, L.O.L. Surprise dolls and (name your favorite toy) will still be available, by click or at bricks-and-mortar stores.
With this downsizing of an empire, there should be an opening for the smaller toy stores that may have struggled to keep up with the warehouse-style stores like Toys R Us.
Maybe the fall of Toys R Us will embolden entrepreneurs to start up new stores that cater to moms and pops who crave a more manageable experience — taking a child to a neighborhood store that doesn’t just pluck boxes from shelves and transport them to the cashier, but lets kids explore and, above all, play. These cozier toy tableaux — many small toy stores already are thriving — could sell more parents on less frenzy and chaos than the typical whining-on-every-aisle model.
Every store, big or small, can depend on the acquisitive instinct in every child. The tot mantra hasn’t changed in generations: See it, want it, persuade parent to buy it.
Any parent who resists that edict risks a reckoning. Smart store owners will make sure many toys are at child eye-level. Hint, hint.
Toys R Us is but the latest big toy retailer to capsize under debt and changing consumer habits. Remember FAO Schwarz, famous for its gaudy New York City flagship store where “Big” movie stars Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced on the floor piano?
Toys R Us bought FAO in 2009 and closed its Fifth Avenue store in 2015. But the new owner of FAO reportedly plans to open a new flagship store in Manhattan and expand the brand into airports around the world. What dies is often reborn in a different form.
As Toys R Us withers, we hope more independent toy sellers bloom. Like toys themselves, all it takes is imagination.
— Chicago Tribune
