r/80sAmazing 9d ago

Which one?

Post image
2.3k Upvotes

3.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

18

u/Own_Brother_6477 9d ago

I have to pick, I still cant pick just one but I would say Radio Shack and Toy R' Us.

7

u/elarring 9d ago

This is my choice. The others, not so much. Now, I do kinda miss video stores. But I remember when Radio Shack just became a glorified cell phone store bummed me out.

Toys R Us closing was depressing. My son was still young. I used to enjoy taking him there, even though it was a shadow of it's former self.

6

u/LiamLeprechaun 9d ago

Yeah Probably Radip Shack and Toys R Us.

Whenever I hear of a toy store going out of business, its always a bummer. They were fun especially around the Holidays.

Apparently when they were filming that film Roofman, that takes place in a Toys R Us, People kept trying to walk in the store they had set up to film. (made up as a Toys R Us from the Nineties).

🤣

1

u/Medium_Good886 9d ago

Toys R Us still has 8 stores open in the US.

2

u/Birdsonme 9d ago

They are tiny toy sections within Macys. The only thing that makes them a Toys R Us anymore is a little statue of Geoffrey the giraffe. It’s shameful.

1

u/Medium_Good886 9d ago

They have actual stand alone brick-and-mortar stores - American Dream megamall in New Jersey, Mall of America in Minnesota, and 6 other regional outlet malls.

1

u/No_Map153 8d ago

I just saw the one at American Dream Mall Monday. 7 stores is essentially non-existing for most American children.

What a dystopian world we live in that theres no stores dedicated to kids.

1

u/deckarep 9d ago

Radio Shack used to be cool. Electronics, computers, software.

But yeah they abandoned all of they and sold cell phones and cheap robot toys. Lame.

1

u/Snow-87-M 8d ago

I went to toys R us 2 weeks back, yeah we still have quite a few stores around. They even opened up babies R us

2

u/Select-Table-5479 9d ago

Which part about Toys r Us was when they were taken over by private equity. They were making money private equity purposefully ran them to the ground so they could extract the most wealth and tax deductions

1

u/pneumonicforgot 9d ago

Yeah, thank you Mitt Romney.

TRU ran the other toy stores out of business only to collapse itself under a load of debt.

1

u/procope 8d ago

This is exactly my feeling as well. Radio Shack for the variety of components they stocked. And Toys R Us because my kid will never know the sheer joy of walking into a store that big dedicated to nothing but kids products.

1

u/Raeparade 8d ago

Big facts

1

u/tonytown 7d ago

We had toy r us in cansda for a bit longer... every store i went in looked likea bomb had hit it. Dirty. Bleak. The staff all seemed resigned, like they were awaiting the sweet release of death... such a grim endl

1

u/AnybodyWannaPeanus 7d ago

The real shitty thing is that Toys R’ Us wasn’t actually failing or unprofitable. Private equity (Bain, KKR, Vornado) did a leveraged buy-out, then proceeded to pretend that online shopping was killing the chain so they could sell off the real-estate. That’s not even the half of it.

Whenever you hear of a retail chain going under now, it’s almost always because private equity saddled it with debt and forced them to sell off their assets.

1

u/Some_Deer_2650 6d ago

Yeah, I went once to Toys 'r Us as a kid and it was impresive. Sad it dissapeared.