History of Toys R Us 2021-2022 — Documentary Update

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: In this update of the history of Toys R Us, we're taking a look at what happened from where my original documentary on the toy store left off. This is the history of Toys R Us from May 2021 through May 2022. So before we dive into what happened this past year, let's do a quick rundown from when Toys R Us went bankrupt up until today. Toys R Us's heyday in the United States started in 1948 and through a lot of mishandling and financial problems, all Toys R Us stores in the United States closed on June 29, 2018. Now several months later in November of 2018, the group Jeffrey LLC who owns the brand decided to breathe new life into the property. Their intention was to have things open for the holiday season of 2018. And the results of this were these small little pop-up shops that'd be put inside Kroger grocery stores. This pop-up shop was called Jeffrey's Toy Box, which had a very limited amount of toys. But hey, it was a start. And then we get into 2019. And January 20th, 2019, Jeffrey LLC formed into an official company and they changed their name to True Kids Incorporated. October 2019, Toys R Us partnered with Target.com. And this partnership essentially was Target taking care of orders that were made on Toys R Us.com. During the holiday season of 2019, two Toys R Us stores popped up. One was in the Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus, New Jersey. And the second was in the Galleria in Houston, Texas. Now these stores were a lot smaller reinvented Toys R Us stores. And with the promise of expansion, Toys R Us planned in the coming year to open an additional 10 stores and a flagship store in Times Square in New York City. And then we get to 2020. And what happens in 2020? A global pandemic hits. And this made all the plans that Toys R Us had for the year crash and burn. The two Toys R Us stores that had just opened had to close temporarily due to toy stores not being essential businesses. Later on in the year, Toys R Us switched from partnering with Target.com to Amazon.com to fulfill orders made on ToysRUs.com. And then the next year in 2021, as both stores have been closed temporarily since March of 2020. Losses were too large and they couldn't afford to stay closed temporarily. So they closed up shop completely and permanently January 2021. Two months later, March 2021, WHP Global buys a controlling part of True Kids Incorporated. And this makes them in charge of what Toys R Us should do next. Their plan was to now expand Toys R Us by building flagship stores, stores inside of airports, and smaller stores inside of larger retail stores. They also had plans to have Toys R Us stores opened in time for the 2021 holiday season. And that is where we left off in the last video. And now, let's see what actually happened. On August 19th, 2021, Toys R Us announced that they had partnered with Macy's to handle and fulfill all online orders made on ToysRUs.com. This meant that Toys R Us was leaving the partnership they had with Amazon.com. Toys R Us was then looking at the hot and growing trend of large retail stores like Kohl's having mini Sephora stores inside of their stores. This is when Toys R Us announced in August of 2021 that many Toys R Us locations would be coming to Macy's department stores nationwide in the United States in 2022. And of course, they had to as many companies were during the peak and the decline of NFTs. Toys R Us threw their hat in the ring as well. And they auctioned off the first set of NFTs featuring Jeffrey the giraffe. The first NFT collection was available on November 13th, 2021, which featured the six looks of Jeffrey the giraffe over the years, along with the 3D model photo as well. On December 16th, 2021, the one and only full-sized Toys R Us store in the United States since the pandemic opened in the American Dream Mall in New Jersey. The features of this store is a slide that spirals from the second story to the first, a cafe called Jeffrey's Cafe, where coffee, pastries, and other snacks are served. And if you want a cool treat, you can swing by their ice cream parlor as well. On this new take of Toys R Us being reborn, they want to not just be visible in stores, but also online as well. So they created a TikTok account. One video on the account features Jeffrey cutting the ribbon along with one kid to celebrate the grand opening of the new store in New Jersey. Their YouTube channel is more of the same with a series of videos called Jeffrey Vision. These videos mostly feature Jeffrey interacting with kids and a few other things with quick arts and crafts edutainment style content. And now we get into 2022. January 2022, WHP Global, who owns Toys R Us and the Babies R Us properties, reported that they were in agreement with a Brazilian retail operator. And the agreement was that for the very first time in South America, Babies R Us stores will be opening. Starting, there's going to be 20 locations. And these stores will be standalone locations, starting with the first being opened in Brazil in late 2022 and many more locations following in 2023. It was around March 2022 when I got my first glimpse of Jeffrey the giraffe coming back to my neighborhood. I started thinking of all the comments that I got on my original History of Toys R Us video. I'd see comments like, [00:06:39] Speaker 2: yes, it's coming back or Toys R Us is coming back to Macy's and so on and so on and so on. I knew a lot of [00:06:50] Speaker 1: people were excited. They felt like things were going to be all okay again. We were going to have the Toys R Us that we all grew up with and loved. But I knew I just knew not to get excited because the Toys R Us is long gone. We are never getting that Toys R Us back, at least for the moment. But anyways, I figured I'd do my due diligence and visit the Toys R Us inside my local Macy's. Entering through the second floor of my neighborhood Macy's, I made my way through the perfume area where the attractive saleswomen greeted me with a smile and they hoped I was there for them. But I made sure to let them know that I was only there for toys. And this is when they directed me to where the mini Toys R Us was, which was downstairs. So I made my way down the escalator. As I got to the bottom, I was hoping to see toys as soon as I hit the floor. No. Beds, pillows. And then I turn to the left. And there it is. Angels sing. Beams of light from the heavens shine down. Stunned as I was, my eyes traveled onward down the section and see it end sooner than expected. The excited comments on my YouTube video flooded through my head and I thought, this is nothing to be excited about. It's a big nothing. The Toys R Us inside of Macy's is basically a toy section in your local Target. The greatest joy of it all was just seeing a Jeffrey the Giraffe standee that greeted visitors to the area. The shelves were fully stocked and kind of overstocked. They're very cramped. This Toys R Us section sold a lot of their specialty brand toys like FAO Schwartz and Melissa and Doug. A lot of educational kind of baby toys almost. Now granted, the shelves were full of Hot Wheels, Barbie dolls, stuffed animals, and the most popular board games out there. Needless to say, this small toy section was just a display of the greatest hits of toys. No video games, no huge section of action figures, no bike section, no super toy run. I wonder if they actually held a super toy run at these locations with five whole minutes to throw things in carts. I feel like the whole section would be wiped out. There'd be nothing left. Give me five minutes with this section of toys. Everything's gonna be gone. Now it may just be my Macy's location, but as I walked through the section, I found items lazily stocked on the floor, and I almost fell from stepping on a Nerf gun. This experience made me feel like I was in a closeout retail store, like this was a toy section at a TJ Maxx or Ross. Ugh. Now granted, I am a grown man. But even as a grown man who still appreciates fun, I know what my kids would want. They'd want to enjoy the old school Toys R Us just as much as I did growing up. And to me, like a lot of kids that grew up with the original Toys R Us, it was more than just toys to us. Toys R Us just had this feeling. The smells of so much fresh plastic in one building. A place you could ride a bike through the aisles without getting yelled at. Much. The overwhelming size of their stores where everything in the store is intended for kids to play with. And to reserve a small section inside of a store and throw some toys in it and call it a Toys R Us. It's honestly a letdown. In Toys R Us' defense, looking at all they've been through, trying to revive a struggling brand inside of the United States, I do give them credit because this is actually a pretty big accomplishment. And as much as I do hope and I'm rooting for them to make it all the way back to how they were in their glory days, I do say that they have a very hard road ahead of them to make that happen. Now I am aware that their main purpose with these pop-up stores is just to build the brand back up again from basically nothing. So I get it, these are baby steps. And also fighting to be a huge presence online. Which is what brings us to today, at this very moment. On May 24th, 2022, Toys R Us announced its exact plans for Jeffrey's World Tour. The tour is to make Toys R Us known as the number one toy store in the world. Jeffrey's going to kick off his world tour by visiting the flagship location in the American Dream Mall in the United States. And then he's going to make his way to Toys R Us stores in Dubai, London, Madrid, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. The visits will include a child ambassador for the store who will host the event as well as social media activities and a sweepstakes where the lucky winner will win a shopping spree. These visits will be recorded and posted on YouTube in a series to further expand Toys R Us's presence. Jeffrey's World Tour is going to be the cornerstone of plans that are going to kick off in 2023 where they're going to focus on toys from the kids point of view with something called the Toys R Us Kids World Council. So with Jeffrey's World Tour kicking off this month in June 2022, more ideas for growth in 2023, it seems as if Toys R Us is in better hands than it has been in a very long time. And as happy as I am to see Jeffrey back in my neighborhood, I really truly want him to do better. And by that I mean move out of the apartment that is the mini store inside of Macy's to his true home, a standalone warehouse size house. The Toys R Us we all grew up with. Where he rightfully belongs. Thinking about Toys R Us, I am very optimistic. I'm crossing my fingers and I hope things go well in the next few years. To be continued. [00:13:34] Speaker ?: you