TOY HISTORY
Local customers reminisce as nationwide toy and game retail chain announces it will close all stores
By JONATHAN BISSONNETTE jbissonnette@pawtuckettimes.com
This toy story doesn’t have a happy ending.
Toys R Us, the national toy-selling chain, will close its 740 stores around the country, including locations in Bellingham and North Attleborough. It ends a 70-year run for the retail giant which was founded in 1948, and reached a peak of popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. The chain’s ad jingle was once a ubiquitous presence during commercial breaks for children’s TV shows, with a chorus of kids gleefully singing “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid...”
At the Bellingham location on Hartford Avenue in the Crossroads Shopping Center, the news was announced by bright red banners hung from the ceiling, reading in yellow and white lettering: Everything Up to 60 % Off; Store Closing Sale!; and Nothing Held Back!
It was a poignant sight for Millis, Mass. resident Christopher Levatt, who had a shopping cart full of knickknacks
as he scanned the aisles along with his seven-yearold daughter Chloe. Levatt n said he remembers coming to Toys R Us when he was his daughter’s age and breathlessly hunting for the latest games, gadgets and gizmos.
“I’ve been coming since e I was a kid,” Levatt said on e Thursday. “Everything’s so t real with technology, it’s made everything change. It’s progress, I guess, but I’m sad to see old traditions go.” d Many have lamented the n closing of Toys R Us as an , example of online retailers y suffocating brick-and-mortar g sellers. Levatt said he saw
that simply as a sign of an R evolution of the retail indus
try. p “We realize things are e changing,” he said.
Levatt said he enjoyed shopping at Toys R Us, with helpful and smiling staffers ready at a moment’s notice.
“All in all, it’s been a good experience. I never had a bad experience with Toys R Us,” he said. “When you hear it’s closing, you’re so surprised. Toys R Us have been good employers.”
An employee in Bellingham said the store was expected to close sometime in April. No staff members knew when the North Attleboro store might close, but a representative with Toys R Us said “stores will begin liquidation in the next several weeks.”
Amy Jones, a Wrentham resident, said while she hated to see the store close its doors, but said she wasn’t surprised. She said in recent years she’d had a hard time with the company’s return policy, calling it “not very customer friendly.”
So why was she shopping at the Bellingham location? “I have three kids and a $20 gift card,” she said.
Jones said she’ll always have the memories of growing up as a “Toys R Us kid.”
“I always loved the toy catalog when I was a kid, my kids now use the catalog to make their Christmas lists … I’m tempted to buy a stuffed Geoffrey (the company’s giraffe mascot). I’m very nostalgic, there’s a lot of nostalgia,” Jones said.
In its prime during the 1980s and 1990s, the chain was referred to as a “category killer” – a business that specializes in a single product, with the size and reach to crush competition from smaller stores. Competition ultimately came in the form of even bigger corporate behemoths, like Target and Wal-Mart – and later from online sellers.
Jones said toy shopping isn’t quite the same online, because only at brick-andmortar stores can you “touch, feel, and have a reaction” to the products.
The closing of the 740 Toys R Us stores will cost 30,000 people their jobs, the Associated Press reported. CEO David Brandon said the company will try to bundle its Canadian business, with
about 200 stores, and find a buyer, the AP reported.
The chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall, saddled with $5 billion in debt, the AP reported. It pledged then to stay open, but Brandon told employees that it had a “devastating” sales performance during the holiday season as customers and vendors shied away. In January, it announced plans to close about 180 stores over the next few months, leaving it with a little more than 700 stores.
The chain’s impending closure will certainly hurt business – at least in the short run – for Pawtucket-based toy maker Hasbro, whose brand is seen all throughout the stores, on all kinds of gadgets, games and figures.
Julie Duffy, a senior vice president for global communications with Hasbro, said via email on Thursday: “We expect the pending liquidation and closure of Toys R Us stores to be disruptive to our business in the near term, most notably during 2018.
“But over the longer-term we believe the market and Hasbro will continue to grow,” Duffy wrote. “Hasbro brands are performing and we are well-positioned with a global omni-channel retail model that ensures our products can be found everywhere consumers shop.”
In the parking lot of the Bellingham store, Wrentham native Sue Moses was filling the trunk of her car with a hodgepodge of toys and games for her grandchildren. She said it was hard to think about saying goodbye to Toys R Us forever.
“I’ve bought my share of toys over the years,” Moses said. “I came for the kids, I have purchased for my kids and grandkids here. I will miss the store, I don’t like everything online.”