Toys R Us was one of my favorite stores in the world. It was always a mandatory stop at the Northridge Mall in Salinas, and when we moved to Connecticut, I spent many hours in the one in the Buckland Plaza here in Manchester.
I was devastated when it closed. We do have a perfectly adequate toy story here still, the Time Machine, but it's not quite the same.
I'd heard that TRU was opening a store up in the Mall of New Hampshire in time for the Christmas season. That by itself wouldn't be worth making the trip, but I was up there anyway visiting my parents, and so Kasul and I stopped by on the way back.
So… is Toys R Us back? Can we all be Toys R Us kids again?
Well. It's like AT&T and Atari and many other brands. They may claim to be the same companies you remember, but they are just facades propped up over the real store. In the case of the store in the Mall of New Hampshire, it is in reality a Go! Calendars & Games store with TRU branding (although the cash register receipts reveal the truth).
On entering, it's super clear that this is not the TRU you remember. For one, it isn't huge. TRU was always overwhelming. Here, half the store is calendars — never a TRU specialty. Along the back wall are some old board games, like Sorry and Parcheesi, games not really part of the general conversation any longer. There's some puzzles. Gone are the long shelves of Barbie and GI Joe, gone are the bicycles and the video games, gone are the crowds of kids. (Well, this was a Tuesday). There instead are the sorts of people you might expect would be at a calendar store; looking for the perfect gift for someone you don't know very well.
So, I bought a calendar and a couple of blind boxes for the kids for Christmas, partially because I think they'd like them, partially because I wanted a TRU-branded bag just to say I was there.
But… it's not Toys R Us. It's a mall calendar store wearing Geoffrey's face. Pleasant enough, but I think it just means the mega store of the past will just be staying there, in the past.
Sorry, Geoffrey. I'll always be a Toys R Us kid at heart. That will be enough.
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