Have any of the toy companies made any statements about the closure? Like Hasbro or Mattel telling it's consumers not to panic even though clearly we are all going to panic any way?

 

Since you live in Japan, why do high end collectible toys sell there but not in the states?

 

Japan tends to cater to a more adult collector niche.

 

Didn't even make it to 70 years old.

 

I'm not. I couldn't care less. All my favorite childhood stores are already gone. Bradlees, KB, Child World. Toys R Us has always sucked balls. I'll miss TRU about as much as I'll miss a women's clothing store.

 

This hurts.  I am sp happy that TRU Canada is holding on as I live in Ontario and my 9 year-old (and myself) depend on our local TRU for toys and, mostly, browsing.  We have no option other that Walmart and they are awful!  However, when I was in grade 5, my family made a trip to FLA and the highlight of that long road trip was visiting TRU.  I bought Rodimus PRime (G1) and a tonne of those MUSCLE wrestling things!  I\'m sad to see them go but hold out hope, in our darkest hour.

 

Its like this. Billy has $15 to spend on board games, action figures, whatever. He is going to get that money and spend it on toys, and whether he buys it from me, Walmart, or TRU is ultimately irrelevant to Hasbro. Billy is still going to spend the money on the toys, no matter who he buys it from. Or likewise, if Hasbro produces 500,000 POTP Grimlocks, with 300,000 of them going to Walmart, and the other 200,000 going to TRU, and TRU goes broke, those 200,000 Grimlocks are still going to be sold, just by other suppliers. TRU is the only one affected as they lost out on the profit that someone else scrapped up. And people were not shopping there anyhow for the sake of cheaper prices at Walmart and Target, so your point about the child seeing the toy is not true, because the parent isn't going to take them there anyway. Just as others said here, most TRU's are empty most of the day. I have three within a 25 mile radius of me, and most of the time they are dead when I go there. And I visited them quite often. As a parent, I would take my four kids there just to look, then head over to Walmart and buy what we saw across the street for the sake of a cheaper price. The point is, demand is not affected by the lack of one supplier. The other suppliers will just have more stock to sell. And the fact that TRU just gave up for the sake of a one time cash in shows just how well they actually ran their company. Everyone knows they are markup city. They failed to be competitive, when they could have, for the sake of a higher profit margin, and it blew up in their face. As I said before, I think others will profit from this. I live in Indiana, and in Kokomo there is a toy shop that is owned by a little guy and it does pretty well. There is no TRU presence there, and never has been. They have Walmarts and all that junk, but Walmart sucks when it comes to inventory because they are too big for their britches, which I believe will be one of the many reasons that will bring their downfall one day as well. So, TRU will leave a void that other can, and will, capitalize on. And for that I am glad.

 

This sucks. This is pretty much the only big chain toy store in the US, so now there are no dedicated toy stores anywhere near my home town. While their prices were never the best, their selection was. And Amazon has even worse prices for the toys I am most into, mainly TF and Lego.

Hope the employees land on their feet and something emerges to take its place.

 

Also blame US copyright law. They couldve sold more MP TFs.... But greed.

 

Not in Japan but as someone living in Asia, i think a lot of the stores here know their niche and cater to it properly. I don’t think you can say high end toys don’t sell in the US, they do, just not so much in places like TRU. In most places here a lot of high end toys are sold in collector stores. Sure TRU gets stuff like the Hasbro MPs now and then (varying by location and character of course) but for a sure thing you need to drop by collectors stores, and in a lot of cases pre-order if you want one for sure.

 

Is there an exact date?

 

Marshalls or Ross, maybe?

 

I wouldn't call Transformers nostalgia driven.

There's nostalgia, but it's always about new iterations and new fans created every day. I don't consider TFs comparable to the likes of G.I.Joe or He-Man or Voltron.

 

Well say you don't pre-order the item when it comes out due to a lack of money but later on down the line the item keeps going up in price on the secondary market, what then? And why don't we have small collector shops like that here in the states?

 

What about Legendary Defender?

 

Honestly, this is hard to say. But, I think the Transformers are hugely popular and will continue to thrive for the foreseeable future. Because this next gen of children are really into them, which is evident by the popularity of the cartoons and films.

 

Will this impact the Asian branch? If it does, to what extent?

 

Nope, because Hasbro has screwed over smaller customers by not letting them order or receive product in a remotely competitive timeframe. And WalMart and Target will continue to undercut MSRP, making the products totally unprofitable for independent stores to compete.

People will continue to be cheap and impatient and drive to 10 WalMarts 50 times a week and not support small stores that are charging $2 more a figure.

 

I dn't see it lasting long. Voltron has no depth, or rich history like the Transformers. While I do actually have fonder memories of Voltron growing than I do of the Transformers, it is hard to deny the decade long popularity since the movies revitalized the brand. I don't see this going away anytime soon, especially with them pumping out movies and cartoon series that continue to rake in the profits. What I dread is the thought of Hasbro eventually selling out to Disney. If that happens, the toy industry will have, for the most part became a total monopoly.

 

Some stores do get extra stocks for walk-ins if they feel they can move it. If there’s an unforeseen demand, well you have to wait for the re-issue, which is something you can see regularly with MPs from Takara. I’m not that familiar with US collector shops but I believe places like NY has them? It’s probably also a diff dynamic there where online collector shops are more prevalent.