Toys R Us opens new seasonal holiday shops at Deptford Mall and King of Prussia
The retail giant closed all its U.S. stores in 2018 but is trying to make a comeback.
Toys R Us, the once-beloved children’s retail chain that filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and closed all of its nearly 800 U.S. stores soon after, is now opening more than two dozen flagship stores and holiday pop-up stores across the country by the end of the year.
The new seasonal stores include two in the Philadelphia area: one at the Deptford Mall in South Jersey, and another at the King of Prussia Mall, according to the company. Toys R Us is already in many Macy’s department stores across the region.
Before Amazon and Walmart took over the toy scene, the retail giant was the most dominant toy seller in the country, with 25% of all toys sold in the U.S. in 1990 purchased at Toys R Us, according to Bloomberg. The company wooed families with its mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe, and gleaming aisles filled with every kind of toy, from dolls to bikes to board games.
But after sales fell dramatically and debts piled up, Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy and then shuttered its brick-and-mortar shops. At the time, customers said they would miss being able to look and touch toys in an actual store.
“I’m going to miss the magic,” one customer told the New York Times in 2018. “I want to cry right now because we had so much fun there.”
Since then, the company has tried various comebacks, with its parent company WHP Global reopening flagship stores around the country.
The new holiday and flagship stores this year represent “a significant milestone in the brand’s growth,” the company said in a statement.
The seasonal holiday shops, opened in partnership with Go! Retail Group, promise kids (and their parents) shelves of popular toy brands, from LEGO and Barbie to Hot Wheels and Paw Patrol.
Independent toy shop owners in Philly said last season that the simplest toys, from wooden blocks to spinning tops, were proving to be the most popular, perhaps in response to AI-equipped plushies and other futuristic gadgets flooding the market.