Toys R Us Closing in 4 Days

The end is not near, it's here. After an extensive liquidation, Toys R Us will close its last [...]

By Nicole Drum

The end is not near, it's here. After an extensive liquidation, Toys R Us will close its last remaining stores in the United States on Friday, June 29.

The toy retailer posted to Twitter earlier today, reminding shoppers that there were only four days left before the stores would be closed for good. The tweet was accompanied by a short video of a woman talking about how the closure was sad for her grandson. You can check it out below.

This update comes weeks after some stores were spotted with For Lease signs prominently displayed. Those stores apparently had already sold through their stock, subjecting them to an earlier final closure than other Toys R Us and Babies R Us locations.

In addition to the sale and lease of several now-shuttered retail locations, Toys "R" Us has also been selling off their intellectual property including their logo, domain names, and iconic mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. The sale of the domain names interestingly also included some rather creative domains the company had purchased simply to prevent them from use on other websites. Purchasing such negative such as ihatetoysrus.com, toysrussucks.com, kinkytoysrus.com, and the somewhat unsettling domains adult-toys-r-us.com and sex-toys-r-us.com is a standard internet business practice to protect the value of the business' legitimate domain and property.

Friday will mark the visible end of a process that began nine months ago when Toys R Us initially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That filing was intended to shed around $5 billion in debt and reinvest the money from debt payment into the stores. However, in March the company converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy and announced that it would close all of its U. S. stores and then stopped website sales shortly thereafter.

CEO Dave Brandon was quite disappointed that things ended up this way for the retailer, expressing his sadness about the situation and appreciation for staff in his official statement on the closings.

"There are many people and organizations who have remained in our corner every step along the way," Brandon said. "I want to thank our extraordinary team members who helped build Toys "R" Us into a global brand. I also want to express my appreciation for my colleagues on our board who have continued to provide support to sustain the brand and our operations throughout the restructuring process. I would also like to thank our vendors who we owe a great deal of gratitude to for their decades of support. This is a profoundly sad day for us as well as the millions of kids and families who we have served for the past 70 years."

Are you sad Toys R Us is closing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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