Toys R Us: Will You Be Coming Home For Christmas?
As noted by Mashable (and bond rating companies), Toys R Us has been piling on debt from its investment holders – normally, they cash out by doing another IPO but in the case of TRU, the numbers behind the numbers are pretty weak so this Christmas might be a tipping point.
At best, TRU declares bankruptcy and emerges stronger – especially since the big toy makers have a vested interest in TRU and will probably forgive a lot of accounts due (or at least negotiate a long payback period) BUT if Mattel, Hasbro, LEGO and others play hardball and stop shipping to TRU? Then it might go bankrupt and never re-emerge or re-emerge as just a name – such as Amazon.com buying just the name so if you type toysrus.com or TRU.com, it just goes to Amazon.
You can read the rest at Mashable.
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26 November 2013
6 Comments
When they have new Cars available, I enjoy going to the store… As BMW said, the Sarge’s Boot Camp was a great box set – 3 out of 5 new vehicles… TJ as a mega size… and the return of Sarge… I’ve also enjoyed the first 4 original playsets… I wish they’d release more of the Radiator Springs buildings at the same size and quality of the first 4… However, they just raised the price of singles to $4.99… while I paid that for the Final Lap series, they are going to have to have Cars I really need for me to pay that much per Car at Toys R US.
Went to TRU last night and had to battle tooth and nail to get them to price adjust. The pegs all said $4.19 but all 16 singles rang up as $4.99. The cashier kept wanting to break everything up in three’s since that was the maximum quantity he could price adjust. We finally got a manager involved and he price adjusted one 3-pack down $12.80.
Side note — my wife texted me from across the store to ask where I was. I replied “in the toy section”. I had myself a good laugh.
Survival of a stand alone Toy Store is going to be hard. Isn’t TRU the last of a breed since KB Toys folded years ago.
We love going to TRU. Some of the best Cars sets have been TRU exclusives.
Sarge’s Boot Camp
Flo’s V 8 Café
Streets of Japan with Tamiko
The Tunerz and Tractor Tippin sets were probably my favorites. Always liked how the interior graphics had the neon effect on the Tunerz set. It bothered me though, that they didn’t put DJ in there. Maybe they will do a similar set with the glow-in-the-dark ones.
I think I estimated a 5 year life span around 2 years ago. Looks like it may be shorter.
I estimated a 2-year life span about 3 years ago, so they have fallen behind.