And by extension, we could start seeing Deadpools in Menards...

 

So that's the chain that owns Fred Meyer up here in the PNW, and it appears that's just signage on a pallet shipper. As soon as they turn up locally I'll report what I find

 

  at all of this....just as many said, TRU is not coming back like we think.

 

So your saying Bain et al is like the Jason Voorhees of struggling stores?

 

Will geoffrey toy box be in other places too ?

 

No idea. Depends if a retailer wants a pallet drop of crap toys in the middle of their store. But Kroger loves pallet drops, so this isn't surprising to me. Dillons, the Kroger store here in central Kansas, just removed the toy sections out of their smaller stores. I wouldn't be surprised if I don't see a GTB pallet drop at my closest store by Black Friday.

As for places like Walmart, I doubt so. They have their own in-house generic brand for holiday shopping...they won't want a product to compete with that.

 

Kroger has been trying to become a "bigger" store lately. Growing up in Southeast Michigan all the Kroger stores I would go to were straight-ahead grocery stores but they've lately been building the Kroger Marketplace (or whatever it's called) concept where they have things like a small toy section, a small clothes section, and so on. It strikes me as goofy as hell since growing up Kroger was just the place we would go to when K-Mart was too expensive and Meijer was too far, but I remember seeing a post here once about how someone could only find the T30 wave with Goldbug and Skids at a Kroger by them and clearly it's expanded since then.

Anyway, I guess my point is that if some major store chain (that originated in the Midwest maybe?) was going to get pallet dumps of 2016's least favorite action figures to try and make a dent in the holiday toy market, Kroger is a fine choice.  

 

So, if all the infrastructure of TRU was sold off at Auction, manufacturer's were screwed over in said process, who is stupid enough to be supplying TRU with credit let alone cash terms? Or is this all the leftover crap not even the liquidator's wanted because it either wasn't potentialy salable (TRU's real legacy in it's stores) or all the damaged crap that usually is leftover when the unclean masses swarm over a corpse to pick it clean?

 

Why is there any assumption that ANY of it (other than the IP itself) has anything to do with the TRU that used to be?

The people running it aren't even the same people as the TRU that used to be. It's ALL different!

With that understanding, I just don't understand how any of these questions are applicable to the current situation.

 

Toys"R"Us appears to have quietly relaunched as 'Geoffrey's Toy Box' with pop-ups in grocery stores

 

Doesn't matter who "owns" the name - the issue is "the name". When you play to shareholders, trying to not lose your jobs or apologizing for losing their money & you toss a reason in the form of a "name" it burns that "name" from future involvement in the financial affairs of a shareholder-held company. To enter immediately back into business would open up the company to things such as collusion, money laundering, deceptive trading practices, etc. etc. As a stockholder, i would immediately file SEC complaints if they ever sold one dollar of product to them after the bankruptcy. Bankrupcy laws do not exist for corporations to enrich themselves so blatently or directly, which this would have a good chance of being proven happened...

I also have not seen anyplace that states the controlling interest of TRU DOESN'T still involve parties from the previous ship....

 

It's all TRU IP stuff. Imaginarium (Thomas KO), Real Heroes (GIJoe KO), etc.

Nothing from major toy brands.

 

The shareholder-held company doesn't exist anymore. Just the IP and the IP's controlled there-in.

It'll be a long battle to regain vendor trust, though, even after being owned by a new group.

 

I meant on the product supply-side - not TRU but Hasbro, Mattel et. all. THEY are all responsible to their shareholders once they play the financial cards involving a "name". That sorta ties their hands legally once they do so.

 

Which is basically junk that very little people wanted.

 

I don't dispute that, for many, the TRU name is tainted (possibly why they're using GTB for now), but most of these questions still strike me as nonsensical given that we're not talking about the same company anymore.

 

For you, you are at your position. To the position of everyone else, we sorta view your position the same way you view ours. The best we can agree is that we disagree or have have differing opinions that won't be resolved fully.

I will say this - if I owned a company - would I want to help foster a competitor I no longer had a financial stake or influential stake with? If you are not in business to be the best & own the market in that way, your in the wrong line of work. It is ultimately a - no more new kids on the block allowed! thing. The only reason KB if it ever returns would be treated differently is the amount of time having passed.

 

Wonder if it would mainly include the larger Kroger Marketplace stores only. I have one of the smaller Krogers nearby but I don't see them having the room to have anykind of meaning Geoffrey set up.

 

Well not surprisingly it turned out that there is no involvement here from Hasbro or Mattel, and that there never actually was any indication that there would be or ever will be involvement from those companies, just wild speculation from those that maybe are still hoping TRU's closing this past year was just a bad dream and that their childhood isn't actually dead.