History of Toys R Us 1948-2021 — Full Documentary

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: as we get into the history of toys r us i want to let you know that this whole bit was recorded before the global pandemic hit in 2020 and obviously a lot has happened since january 2020 i'm going to fill you in with what has exactly happened to toys r us since the pandemic hit up until today so with that being said make sure to stick around for the update and let's get into the history of toys r us all right guys you in for a treat today because we're gonna go over the history of toys r us and where it all began and how it ended up and what is the future and the fate of toys r us we're gonna get into it now my sources were all over the place and if you try to just look up somewhere on wikipedia a lot of things are just scattered and if you try to go about it on your own it's kind of hard if you want to piece the whole story together so i did that for you very conveniently put all the dates in the correct order and uh we're gonna go through this together we're gonna have some fun okay so who started it where did it start all that good stuff well it goes back all the way to world war ii by a guy named charles lazarus and let's talk about charles lazarus he specialized in communication and technology in the military and so after the war in the late 40s he came back home and his father owned a bike shop and he just recalls that all his friends in the military were like oh man i can't wait i'm gonna get home start a family and all that which created what we call as the baby boom and came the boomers so charles along with all of his friends started having kids too and he thought man all these everyone's having babies we need to maybe start selling some baby furniture and stuff in my dad's bike shop and so things started really picking up for him you know he's selling a lot and it got so large that he wound up opening up his own store so he took two thousand dollars of his savings and two thousand dollars of a loan out and opened his first shop in 1948 in washington dc called children's bargain town and it was basically just a children's furniture store lots of baby cribs toddler type stuff but he started selling baby toys real just cheap baby toys or whatever but he realized though that couples coming in for their second kid just bought baby toys and stuff like that they weren't coming in to buy another crib because the crib they bought for their first child was being used for their second child so he was like okay i'm selling a lot more toys because they're only going to buy one crib so let me just expand on toys so he got into more and more of selling toys to the point where he saw selling toys were more profitable than selling furniture baby cribs and stuff like that and so his store went through a few name changes he changed it also to children's super mart from children's bargain town during this time the first appearance of the mascot the big old giraffe dr g raff came into play this was the first incarnation of jeffrey the giraffe and so now we are in june of 1957 where charles lazarus finally buckled down and the very first toys r us opened in rockville maryland and charles had the idea where the r in toys r us was actually just the letter r and written backwards to make it look and appear as if a kid wrote it that was his thing charles was a very playful kind of guy you know he wasn't the strict ceo type he liked having fun and i think that's a lot of the reasonings why toys r us was such a big success was the fact that the main guy the big cheese the man in charge also was very into toys and being playful in general business was going good and in 1958 he opened up his third store which became the big one the thing that made a foothold for him in the industry was when he opened this 25 000 square foot toys r us and it looked like a supermarket of toys just batches and batches of toys just nothing as far as the eye could see just toys and he boasted that his store was 30 to 70 percent lower prices than any of his competitors so toys r us basically became the walmart of toy stores and with this lazarus was able to talk to toy manufacturers and negotiate deals where other people couldn't because he would claim that his store was opened all year round instead of like big seasonal booms and this is when he could order toys at a much lower price and buy in big bulks and also in japan they were rebuilding after the war and so they were making a lot of just toys and getting into that market charles bought a lot from japan he also demanded that toy makers would take payments later on and not pay them up front he wanted exclusive and early releases and also have them advertise for toys r us so charles went in and he went in hard with the toy market and so business kept picking up and kept picking up and in 1966 toys r us had caught the attention of interstate department stores and they bought toys r us and they put lazarus as head of its toy division and by the end of the 60s in 1969 dr g raff he stopped being a professor put his doctorates away and he officially became the mascot for toys r us and he got a real nice makeover and a name change to jeffrey the giraffe and so what did the store look like around this time from the late 60s and then on well 30 years from 1969 to 1989 it had the classic rainbow colored stripes all around it with the brown roof and a big orange front entrance square right above the doors that said entrance and had a picture of jeffrey the giraffe on it so now we're in the 70s and a few years pass and interstate files for bankruptcy in 1974 and lazarus he's put in charge of restructuring and he sells off divisions that were losing cash uh 1975 we saw a new version of jeffrey the giraffe with a more doe-eyed look we go down three more years and in 1978 toys r us went public and started trading on the new york stock exchange and with lazarus's like background and technology and communication and all that kind of stuff he set up this computerized inventory system and it let him see directly from his desk he could sit there and see every single thing that's bought so he knew exactly when to reorder something and he was praised for that like it like it was a huge innovation in the industry and so the 80s hit and video games weren't a big thing like they are now like back then they were just seen as a passing fad like oh this is gonna go on they they were seen as the fidget spinners of the early 80s basically but lazarus being the smart technology kind of guy he was he knew that video games were gonna be a much bigger thing later on and so he actually pushed forward to have video games in toys r us by the 80s and he saw video games as a way to bring in adult customers customers that didn't even have kids and so now with video games in toys r us it kind of expanded to almost the age of three or lower to the age of 21 or beyond now and so 1983 comes along in february of that year came the first kids r us store and it specialized in discount kids clothes rather than toys and they opened two locations in paramus new jersey and brooklyn new york now i don't know about you but when i was a kid and i saw the first kids r us in my area it was a huge let down because toys r us was here first then i see kids r us and i go into it and i'm like what is this clothes i could go to jc penny so i never liked kids r us uh i think a lot of kids were duped they saw the colorful sign out front and thought there were toys inside and then 1984 came along and the first international store opened up in canada the next year 1985 uk got its first toys r us and finishing out the rest of the 80s they seem to be basically on the up and up 1988 jeffrey got another look a nice little facelift he got a more rounded head and a shorter snout and then came the 90s and a lot of other stores got into the new toy and video game business and toys r us they started slipping but things were still good in the 90s they weren't bad in 1991 japan they saw their first toys r us 1993 toys r us made it to the land down under in australia and after almost 50 years in 1994 charles lazarus he retires and then a year after that toys r us stores opened in africa in the middle east in 1995 and then in april of 1996 the company started to expand and they opened their first babies r us in westbury new york and that sold specialty baby products and offered pre and post natal classes and events for mothers and mothers to be babies r us got so big that in february of 1997 toys r us bought out baby superstore incorporated for 376 million dollars and converted all of their 78 stores into babies r us's and in 1998 the first red flag the first thing of things to come for toys r us came where walmart beat toys r us as the top toy seller in the u.s for the first time so toys r us is sitting there like man uh walmart beat us what what what do we need to do what's big in the late 90s ah the internet so toys r us dot com launched in 1998 and during the christmas of 1999 there was disaster because they failed to deliver toys on time and so with that in 2000 toys r us got a 10-year contract with amazon.com to be the supplier of all the toys to their website and just before the turn of the new millennium jeffrey the giraffe once again he still got a cartoon look but his eyes were twice the size as before got a nice little look there again a little makeover so at the beginning of the year 2000 got a whole new fresh millennium to start and all that they're sitting there thinking man we lost out to walmart as the top toy seller what can we do so they bring in john eiler he was uh formerly of fao schwartz and he was brought on to oversee and improve the 1500 toys r us stores worldwide and he had this idea to have an expensive remodel and a relaunch of all the stores and so including all of his other ideas he had this idea of a flagship store in times square in new york city so in july of 2001 the flagship store was opened and it was a 110 1000 square foot store and it included themed parts of the store where there was a barbie life-sized dream house uh jurassic park with an animatronic t-rex legos wonka and its famous indoor ferris wheel that from pictures i could see it was about three and a half stories tall so it's pretty cool look and i wish i could have went when it was around and they were building on it to be the gaming spot the video game spot in the world and it served as the world's first location to launch the original xbox in 2001 and so before 2001 closed out jeffrey the giraffe went through another once again look and this time he has a more realistic look like he's a real life giraffe that is just really friendly and he's wants to deal toys to kids but things were kind of getting bad but a few years pass and in 2003 all the kids are us stores closed which me personally good riddance see you later sayonara and where i live what took place of the kids are us was just a babies are us so i don't know what's worse it's a it was still yet another store i didn't care or need to go into and so this is how i see toys are us with their biggest slip up ever is in 2005 they took a 6.6 billion dollar buyout deal from investment firms which took it back into private ownership in hopes of growing and taking it public within the next few years the next year in 2006 toys r us got into a lawsuit with amazon.com because amazon.com they went back on a promise from their original contract with toys r us where they weren't going to let third-party retailers sell toys on amazon but amazon kind of did that and amazon's reasoning for this was that toys r us was failing to stock things for the demand on the website so anyways the outcome of that lawsuit was that toys r us wanted 93 million over damages but they wound up winning 51 million instead 2007 came jeffrey's last and current look which is very south park looking it looks like uh construction paper how he was made very cartoon like it's probably the worst version of jeffrey giraffe in the history of toys r us and i don't like it i mean i could think that this version this god-awful version of jeffrey the giraffe is the reasoning why toys r us wound up going kaput because uh yeah i mean it's silly to say that i mean i don't i seriously don't think that but uh you know you look at jeffrey the giraffe now and how he was and uh it's almost like a sign of the times he just keeps looking worse and worse 2009 toys r us got bold thinking they get better with the idea of buying etoys.com toys.com and buying the toy stores kb and fao schwartz which at the time they were going basically out of business too and so for the holidays in 2009 toys r us took advantage of the recession a lot of shopping malls were losing stores so there were a lot of blank spaces in these malls so toys r us had this idea to create the toys r us holiday express it was your one-stop shop for toys and toys r us products while you're shopping around at the mall getting bath and body works and vanilla bean noel uh body wash or whatever so toys r us holiday express was a much smaller version obviously of toys r us and originally they were only wanting to keep it open until january of the next year but it wound up being such a big success that it wound up being permanent and they renamed it toys r us express and so a few more months passed and in may of 2010 they expanded to where now there were 600 toys r us express stores opened and yeah they they were living life in the fast lane in that toys r us express so in the next few years after 2010 the website actually starts getting better and sells a lot more things and they were about ready to take things public but the market was stalling so they kept toys r us a private affair they locked their doors shut their windows and said nah we're gonna stay private and so now we are at the holiday season of 2013 and toys r us did a bold move where their flagship store in time square was open 24 hours a day from december 1st to december 24th and also toys r us then announced eight days before christmas to keep all of their stores open around the clock for 87 hours straight after they noticed that there was a decline of about nine percent of foot traffic over the past few years because of snow and whatever else and all of this around the clock hustle and bustle 24 hours a day led to hiring over 45 000 seasonal workers and as toys r us closed up 2013 this would be the last year that they'll see any profit from here on out they're gonna be losing cash 2014 the very impactful year for me personally and i guess toys r us came and they had a strategy called the tru transformation their idea of this was to make stores less cluttered and make the pricing and the promotions a lot more clearer to customers they were focusing on making things very simplified that was about it a few things happened in 2015 toys r us hired their fourth ceo in 16 years his name was dave brandon and he was the chief executive officer of domino's pizza what old davy boy did he introduced a concept store called the toy lab uh it became available in california and a few east coast states where stations were set up with certain toys where kids could play with them they're opened and you know they could figure out if they wanted to ask their parents to buy it or not you know and sadly after about 15 years they canceled the lease for the flagship store in times square saying rent was just too high and it's new york city i mean hey yeah rent is high even for a billion dollar company sometimes in 2016 toys r us saw a rise in earnings but it still wasn't much they didn't make a profit and compared to dealing with the debt from the buyout 10 years before it wasn't enough 2017 they decided to buckle down and they hired a law firm to help restructure the corporate side of things mr suit and tie and they wound up filing for bankruptcy in september of 2017 to deal with the five billion dollars in debt and so what this means is that they'd borrow two billion to pay for suppliers for the upcoming holiday season and then they take the rest and invest it on improving the stores overall because a lot of the stores were getting run down they needed a lot of repairs stuff like that things weren't getting done and so it comes down to the fatal year of 2018 it came oh it came and in january toys r us announced that they were closing 182 stores the next month in february they announced that all the u.s locations would be closed march some companies and buyers started they're scrambling trying to buy up some of the stores for showrooms and they're wanting to get the intellectual property that is toys r us and a financial holding company fairfax financial was able to purchase operate and run the canadian division of toys r us so toys r us in canada is doing fine you know they're they're bought out by somebody else so they're staying afloat they got the toys r us name and they also said that they were interested in buying some of the u.s locations and expanding in the u.s and then also that same month on the fateful day of march 22nd 2018 the founder of toys r us charles lazarus passed away at the age of 94. summer came june 29th 2018 after 70 years of business all the toys r us and babies r us stores in the u.s closed and being a toys r us kid now only exists in our memories and that my friends is how toys r us as we all knew it growing up ended but how did the toys r us's outside of the u.s end up well let's look into that in canada they are 100 canadian owned and operated and there are 82 locations still open today and they seem to be doing really well in europe there are 41 official stores with the toys r us logo on it and in germany austria and switzerland the stores were bought out and rebranded by their uk and irish rival smiths smyths and in france the toys r us stores came back but under the name pickwick toys in australia all 44 stores closed around the same time the u.s stores closed but they're slowly making a comeback through areas of a store called hobby warehouse in asia toys r us was sold off to another retailing company and the rights to use the toys r us name in their brand and the asian arm of toys r us is practically unaffected by anything that happened from the bankruptcy in the u.s and there are currently 470 stores open still in the whole continent of asia including 47 in japan 196 in china and 13 in saudi arabia that's not all of them but those are just a few i picked out from the bunch in africa there are 52 stores still open including 47 in south africa and three in egypt yeah check out the great pyramids and buy yourself a dunkin yo-yo or something so after we did a little world tour there you want to know is there a future for toys r us in the united states again so after toys r us closed in the summer of 2018 a few months passed and in the fall in october of 2018 the lender that is in control of the toys r us property stated that they had plans to revive the business by keeping their original licensing and create new ways to open up stores the next month in november they came to something called jeffrey's toy box which were little toy stores inside kroger grocery stores selling private toys r us labeled style toys you know this could be just plush toys or just little knickknacks that kind of stuff you know 2019 comes and january 20th 2019 the company came back as tru kids tru standing for i would like to think toys r us june 2019 they announced that stores will be coming back in the us but only about a third of the size of the original big box stores and october before holiday season kicked into gear they announced with the help from target.com the store target they will be handling all the orders bought through toys r us.com and finally a little a little glimmer of light like a phoenix rising from the ashes two stores pop back up in the us and on november 27th the first one popped up in the westfield garden state plaza in paramus new jersey and december 7th 2019 the second location opened at the galleria in houston texas so these aren't the big stores like we remembered i want them to come back like that but this isn't these are baby steps they're crawling back up you know they got knocked down they're trying to get back up in the fight you know they're tapping a as hard as they can to get back up before mario counts to 10 punch out reference sorry so with that being said there are now two locations in the united states and so as for the future of this year 2020 and beyond what they're planning to do is open up 10 more stores in the nation throughout the nation and they're going to make a larger store in new york city times square again and larger flagship store not as large as the one they had before with the ferris wheel and all that just larger compared to the ones they're opening now so it may be just as large as a regular toys r us as we remember it back in the day and this is actually something cool something nice but you know what have they been doing since then but they're making it a priority to hire back the employees they had in the past and so that's where we are at currently with toys r us will these stores fail will they succeed well me personally i believe we will be seeing jeffrey the giraffe very soon in our neighborhood once again after toys r us's optimistic plans to rise up in 2020 much like other businesses toys r us was also hit with the covet 19 global pandemic it was only essential businesses that could stay open during the pandemic unfortunately for toys r us they weren't considered an essential business this was the worst time for toys r us to have a plan for growth and to make a major comeback so when the pandemic hit march 2020 toys r us's two stores that were opened in paramus new jersey and houston texas had to close due to the pandemic now they were still technically in business but having to stay closed obviously hurt business so as people stayed home shopping online only got more popular in august of 2020 target and toys r us split their deal where target would fulfill orders made on toys r us.com toys r us then wound up partnering with amazon.com and amazon's role in this was the same thing as targets where they would take care of the orders made from toys r us.com so simply when you click on a button to buy an item on toys r us.com it redirects you to amazon.com by the end of 2020 as the covet 19 pandemic was still on the rise toys r us's plan to open 10 more stores across the united united states sadly didn't happen starting the new year in 2021 january 2021 toys r us took huge losses on their two stores that were opened and they wound up closing both of them the houston location closed first on january 15th and then the paramus new jersey location closed on january 26th march 2021 whp global a management team that works with large brands bought a controlling interest in true kids they see toys r us as a clean slate basically so with this they announced in mid march 2021 that they have plans to open flagship stores and smaller pop-up stores inside airports and retail stores this kind of reminds me of what jeffrey's toy box was a couple years ago in april 2021 various trademark filings by whp global started some rumors that they might be planning to make toys r us theme parks now as trademark filings cause all kinds of rumors this was all just speculation but they filed trademarks for the names toys r us land toys r us park and toys r us world so on one hand these trademarks could be names for theme parks then on the other hand they could be names for just sections of stores or maybe different sizes of stores that they have planned in the future so who knows it's all rumors at this point so now as we are in may 2021 plans for toys r us stores are set to be open in time for the 2021 holiday season so as there's new ownership under toys r us in the united states that's driven to push the store in a more strategic way it's only a matter of time to see if jeffrey the giraffe will make his way back into your town to be continued [00:31:20] Speaker ?: you