Why are millennials so hell bent on destroying everything? I always looked at Toys R Us (and Babies R Us) as a good barometer for the state of parents with disposable incomes. Without them, there's literally no nationwide toy stores & only small sections in Targets & Wal-Marts (both pale in comparison), or small local shops.
Will based Gen Z & their preference towards traditionalist social views & conservatism save us all?
>Will based Gen Z & their preference towards traditionalist social views & conservatism save us all?
Certainly. Right after they put on their ass showing shorts and take some facial pics for instagram.
Brody Jenkins
This is Amazon, and the internet... Nothing else. It isn't the first time retail has been doomed either... Sears catalog did the same thing back in the day.
Brody Allen
>wah why won't people waste their time going into a store to buy overpriced shit like I did Amazon is cheaper. Stay fucking mad, free market forces don't give a shit about your fee fees.
Owen Harris
Toys R Us had its days numbered the moment kids started caring more about electronics and amazon came around. A chain that gets all its profit during a single month is doomed once competition arises.
Samuel Watson
>Toys R Us puts my small-town toy stores out of business >Wal-mart moves in >Target moves in >AMAZON AMAZON AMAZON
Our Toys R Us is an empty shell. There is never anybody in it, ever. It is in a prime location in our town, too, so overhead must be through the roof. I visit Toys R Us once a year to pick up random tinker toys to flesh out Christmas after I've ordered what kids asked for through Amazon.
Jonathan Barnes
This. People aren't buying fewer toys they just aren't supporting their local brick and mortar stores
Carter Torres
>Why are millennials so hell bent on destroying everything? I always looked at Toys R Us (and Babies R Us) as a good barometer for the state of parents with disposable incomes. Without them, there's literally no nationwide toy stores & only small sections in Targets & Wal-Marts (both pale in comparison), or small local shops.
because kids don't want plastic garbage anymore
they all want new iphones or laptops first
and the boys want a new xbox, some prepaid cards for loot boxes, and the collectors edition of some shitfest new gaem with a plastic statue of some nerd hero to put on a shelf
and the girls want vibrating, gyrating blutooth dildos, trashy makeup, and slutty clothes and u can get all that on amazon which is rarely out of stock.
Nolan Foster
This user gets it. I'm a parent of 2 and have never set foot in a toys r us.
Lincoln Morales
>monopolists forces don't give a shit about your fee fees.
FTFY senpai. Enjoy your corporate overlords and arrests for wrong think
Eli Wright
>Why are millennials so hell bent using more convenient services and not buying cheap plastic tat
Kevin Diaz
>I always looked at Toys R Us (and Babies R Us) as a good barometer for the state of parents with disposable incomes >millennials parents >disposable income Found the issue
I'm a parent of three and Toys R Us has shit toys. It's that simple. A store full of toys that no parent wants to buy. Overpriced, toxic plastic shit to estrogen dose your boots with. We're all shopping on Amazon buying wooden toys from Faggot and Faggot Eco homo inc
Grayson Hughes
Kids don't play with toys anymore. Their parents just give them an ipad so they can watch pregant elsa spiderman videos on youtube.
Jackson Wood
Yeah, really. Toys suck fucking ass these days. I still like toys even though I'm well into my 30s and there's literally nothing entertaining anymore besides RC helicopters.
Asher Jenkins
Its both these combined desu. I'm a parent of 3, and any parent knows that kids (esp younger) need to actually experience & see IRL what they're wanting. Meaning a lot of times, they don't even know what they want until they go see it & play w a couple different toys. It could be something they never even thought of that they end up taking home. And you need a store for that (try telling a kid you have to wait for an Amazon shipment, see how that goes).
This is sad.
Benjamin Reed
>literally no one buying star wars toys >goys'r'us are like; 'fuck'
Chase Lee
retail dying is the most natural thing in the world. it was a temporary aberration, a boom/fad that got artificially extended because it preserved jobs.
Wyatt Cruz
Gen Z will get sterilized from using their phones and tablets at all times before they ever have kids
Samuel Reed
millennials has nothing to do with it fag
Evan Lewis
Didn't Toys Я US ignore the whole online market?
No online purchases? No phone application?
I don't know what they sell know, but back in the mid 90s they had some awesome Star Trek TNG and DS9 action figures.
Where I live in particular the Toys Я US is difficult to find. Instead of being close to the mall it is more up on a hill behind it where nobody can see it.
the internet is slowly making people less materialistic and they don't even know it. That and Lego toys are way too expensive for what they are.
Lucas Evans
Nobody supports their local toy maker anymore. Why, with these new fangled catalogues, there's nary a reason to set foot in his place. Children are no longer sated with quaint wooden knick-knacks. Now delights the world over are brought in by the post.
Nathaniel Green
It's not consumers' fault Toys 'R' Us went bankrupt. They did a leveraged buyout in 2006, right before the crash.
fuck plastic toys teach your kids how to milk a goat or slaughter a pig instead let them play with sticks and stones
Levi Ramirez
This! everyone in this thread is a goddamn retard also kids don't buy a lot of toys anymore Millennials buy them more than kids.
Dominic Russell
Toys R Us was a fucking wonderland. People will miss it when it's gone.
Jose Murphy
>Amazon >Free Markets
What?
Brayden Powell
There are still a huge number of really cool toys out there, but they lack marketing. I think Lego and Hasbro are some of the only toy makers that actually have an inkling of how to market their products. Many of them just toss up a cheaply made commercial during some age appropriate show on Cartoon Network and call it a day. Of course, if the parent isn't watching the show with their kid, the actual decision maker is not receiving the advertising, rendering it ineffective. So there are a lot of great products languishing on shelves because no one knows they exist. Remember, Coca-Cola has done studies that show that, despite being possibly the single most ubiquitous brand name in the world, despite having conditioned 7 billion people to subconsciously associate one of the three primary colors with their product, if they don't advertise enough, they don't sell enough. So as a toy maker, unless your product is somehow more globally renowned than Coca-Cola, it needs real care and thought put into its marketing.
The second problem is video games. Not that video killed the radio star, or that people would rather buy Call of Duty and play online than buy Nerf and play outside. That's the marketing issue from before. The problem here is in retail profit margins - specifically, that there are none. Your basic console game that retails for $50 - $60 has, at the absolute most, $1 of profit for the retailer. So if you're a clerk at Gamestop makeing $10 per hour, if you sell less than 10 games every hour, the company is losing money. This is why video game retailers have always pushed used games so vigorously: they buy a game back from you for $3 and resell it for $30 - a much better margin than selling new. This is also why outfits like Gamestop have branched out into other product lines like collectables and have started pushing insurance plans on all of their products. Those have far, far more profit than games.
To be continued.
Michael Gray
Time to go buy some Lego sets for my daughter on the cheap.
Alexander Thomas
most likely its a result of Tablets and Smartphones... children rather play shitty minecraft clones and other shit or watch kiddy youtube channels than play with real toys
Anthony Cox
shut the fuck up with your retarded toys for cucks shilling.
These other product lines become even more important when you consider that many new game boxes just contain CD keys or Steam codes and therefore cannot be sold back to the store and then resold as used. The non-resellability of games is the #1 reason for the format shift of Gamestop in particular: the thing that has been the cornerstone of their entire business model since their inception some 30 years ago is ceasing to exist. Just like if you manufacture cat litter, and suddenly a plague kills all the cats in the world, you need to change what you sell or you will go out of business.
So what this means is that shiny new games are essentially not worth the store space they take up. Consider the rent on your store in terms of dollars per square foot. If a product isn't generating enough money to pay for it's portion of the floor, you are losing money just by it being there. At only $1 per unit, you need to sell a lot of copies of a game just to pay the rent. And we haven't even figured in utilities like keeping the lights on. If you've been to a Toys R Us lately, you probably noticed the video game section was quite sprawling, and probably up front in some of the store's prime real estate. That's a lot of floor space, and therefore a lot of rent to pay. In any kind of sales setting, if you don't have a huge profit margin, you need to rely on volume. Any given Toys R Us would need to sell a fabulous number of games for that area of the store to actually be profitable. And that has simply not happened.
So it is really no surprise to see Toys R Us closing down. Other large national retailers selling more profitable items have closed down. This was basically inevitable. Gamestop's continued existence will be based on the success of their pivot into other product lines. We will probably see them selling more tablets, t-shirts, and Funkopop figures and fewer actual console games over the next few years.
To be concluded.
Nicholas Roberts
Part the third.
You will probably also see the clerks getting far more aggressive trying to sell you insurance plans on everything you buy, as their employment will necessarily be dependent on their success at that one venture. The insurance plans are the only thing in the store that are truly 100% profit.
So here is a bit of irony: Toys R Us started selling conventional toys, evolved to sell video games, and collapsed in large part because of it. Gamestop started selling video games, evolved to sell conventional toys, and is surviving largely because of that.
The bottom line is that, from the retailer's perspective, Nerf has more profit than Nintendo. Maybe it really is "Nerf or nothing."
Gavin Flores
>small local shops are a bad thing durrrr
Luke Bennett
>national chain >local
Jonathan Carter
maybe they'll get into offering financing on game systems but at rent-to-own rates to the stupid
Jayden Collins
Good analysis. A bit too educated for an online Mongolian yak breeding forum.
Andrew Foster
Goys R Us was overpriced and the stores were filthy and full of unruly kids.
Good riddance
Nathaniel Robinson
Toys r us fucking blows. All of their shit is marked up retardedly high except video games strangely enough >Lego set at Walmart - 25 bucks >Lego set at toys r us - 60 bucks
Lincoln Davis
Maybe the Trump Justice Department should bring an antitrust suit against Amazon.