Toys R gone: Shoppers find nostalgia, empty shelves
Even mannequins are sold out at retailer that once loomed in every kid’s imagination
In its waning hours, the Toys R Us on Westheimer was filled more with memories than merchandise.
“It’s always very fun, experiencing it through the eyes of a child,” Houston native Mary Kristen Valentine recalled, maneuvering around mostly empty shelves.
Growing up in Houston, she had gone there with her mom — “It was a big deal,” she says — then while living in New York in her 20s, she marveled at the neon-lighted Ferris wheel inside the store at Times Square. Later, Valentine had registered with Toys R Us for the births of both daughters. She regrets her girls won’t grow up with the toy store, which shuttered the last of its locations Friday.
The store at 6145 Westheimer was the last Toys R Us to close in the Houston area.
“Sad,” whispered daughter Mary Morgan, 5, who was there with her mom and her sister, Catherine, 3.
The girls perused some of the remaining toys, but nothing grabbed their interest. A blue sign marked the merchandise 90 percent off. The front end cap displayed a bulky and well-worn store printer marked as “fixtures furniture & equipment,” priced $400. On the main checkout counter sat unused cash register parts being sold for $80.
A crew of men inside a yellow caution-tape barricade disassembled empty toy shelves. Toward the back, leading to Babies R Us, was a faded poster of a smiling baby. One employee explained that even the mannequins were sold out.
A different Christmas
The closure of the Westheimer location follows a three-day liquidation sale across the region. There were instances of a single buyer taking everything left on the floor at a couple of stores, according to one employee.
As customers struggled to find something, anything, left on Thursday night, one was overheard asking a companion, “Do you wanna go to Target?”
Toys R Us, already struggling due to competition from Walmart and Amazon, was $5 billion in debt and had filed for bankruptcy in September. The shutdown of 700-plus stores leaves around 30,000 people jobless.
Its absence will make this Christmas markedly different for Terese Miranda and her two sons.
“I think it’s the end of an era,” Miranda said.
She lamented that younger generations were going to miss out on some of the store’s iconography, like the Geoffrey the Giraffe mascot. Standing before a half-full shopping cart, Miranda said shopping the internet just isn’t the same.
“Coming in, you always end up seeing something else,” she said. “And when you’re looking (online), sure you’re moving your computer screen around, but it’s nothing like touching and feeling something.”
‘It was disappointing’
A woman employed by Toys R Us for more than a decade said she has known some of the young-adult customers who visited her Houston-area store since they were kids themselves. She recalled the festive Toy R Ushosted birthday parties that will cease to be.
The employee said the Houston market was doing well compared to others. Many customers came to them to buy replacements for their Hurricane Harvey-damaged toys, she said.
The urgency to clear out the store bewildered former Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, who rushed in looking for the black ride-on toy truck his 5-year-old daughter requested as a gift for her birthday this week. Unaware the retailer was going out of business, he was stunned to find barren fixtures and walked out empty-handed.
“It was disappointing to see that they’re closing down,” Peterson said.
Peterson and Valentine were, as the 1980s commercial jingle went, “Toy R Us kids.”
The NFL free agent recalled his parents driving him from his East Texas hometown of Palestine to the Toys R Us in Dallas in search of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” action figures.
Visiting Toys R Us, he said, was “going to a place where you know they have everything you could wish for.”