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Time for a raid on star wars figures.
I will have my Y wing.
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Must be a tough spot for commercial real estate these days. You take a cut on rent or you have giant retail space sit empty for a decade or longer. See how many spots TrU has to close.
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While I know that political discussions are verboten, being a child of the 80s this is all too familiar:
*SIGH* And people say the 80s are dead.
EDIT: And I'll freely admit that this time they had all kinds of other issues (Amazon being the elephant in the room), but the debt from 2005 didn't help at all.
Captain, are you going to be OK?
People file for bankruptcy so frivolously nowadays they have to add words like Global or Universal, to be taken seriously.
I don't think it's political (well, not more political than anything else in life at least). I think it just comes down to the internet strangling brick and concrete stores. Which I just hate.
I LIKE going to book stores and stumbling on some book I never heard of and flipping through it.
I LIKE being able to try on a shirt before I buy it.
and so on and so forth. I feel like, by retreating to the digital realm, all the fun is taken out of shopping, not to mention all elements of human interaction.
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I feel precisely that way about computer games.
Hopefully the silver lining to the dangers of cybersecurity/fear of dystopia/just general fatigue will create a backlash from this. I can see (and am certainly really HOPING for) big boxed computer games like you had in the 1990s coming back at least as luxury items for connoisseurs, not just bringing back but EMPHASIZING beautiful and creative manuals and cluebooks, cloth maps, etc.
Anyone remember the faux-leather-bound manual that came with the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans that read as the Human side from one end and the Orc side from the other? A true work of art - and that's to say nothing of the Isles of Terra and Clouds of Xeen cluebooks, which kept me fascinated for years.
Or the manual to Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, which friggin' came with a working recipe for banana bread at the end (ProTip: A friend and I actually made it once - it needs a lot more sugar than stated)!
I read an article recently that said toys'r'us was one of the worst major companies to work for. payed less the Walmart and target on average. So at least you can kind of look at something of a positive there. Still sucks for people that worked their of course hope they find better work. (which I guess is any job?)
lets see one employee said this:
Benefits are not paid for by the company, tuition assistance is very restrictive and limited, and while paid time off is earned based upon the hours you work per week. It is hard to schedule time off. All full time hours are reserved for employees with management positions regardless of how hard or little they actually work to support the store.
Oh and apparently their health insurance had high deductibles and high premiums.
I could see having the bulk of your work force be part time seriously hitting that average. Most of benefits where for management it seems. It also seems most employee's don't stay very long so that would probably skew the numbers more. Walmart at least has some non-managerial employees that have been their 20+ years.
Hard to say I will say if Walmart starts paying 15 an hour my job had better step up quick or wave by by to me. Not that I plan to get a job at Walmart I just expect other major chains to follow suit.
Net gain=negative financial movement.
In addition, companies that raise their prices too high will gut themselves when they don't make volume on sales.
It's a mess, no doubt about it, and it's not going to get better any time soon. Especially if
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I think I remember the math in college for your average Walmart to give all its employee a 1 dollar raise they would have to increase the average cost of every item in its store by 1-2 cents.
I think I could live with that.
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My first memories of RPGs are 10-11 yro me buying the Shadowrun 1e Street Samurai Catalog and AD&D 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover at our local Toys R' Us. I had neither games corebook(s); I just bought them because of the cool covers and because they looked neat when I flipped through the inside pages. After I'd read them both multiple times and earned more lawnmowing money, I came back and bought the corebooks. Later, I spent a lot of money building up my collection of Gen1 Transformers. I still can remember the awe of sub-5' tall me standing in those long rows and soaring big box store ceilings, seeing a seemingly endless display of toys. I hope TRU can stick around to keep giving kids that feeling.
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Also, as a kid, it was a huge moment to carry something up to the register, pay for it with my own money, and get the same respect from the cashier as an adult would in any other store.
There was also a moment of awareness as I watched kids get dumped at the TRU while their parents shopped at the mall across the street. I got so irritated, even angry, about how those kids badly behaved in the store.
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I collected bayblades and then UBIFUNKYs (utterly garbage product but gosh darn I love em) and Bakugan and all the while yu-gi-oh and Pokemon from there. Yet some how have no connection to the place emotionally.
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I collected bayblades and then UBIFUNKYs (utterly garbage product but gosh darn I love em) and Bakugan and all the while yu-gi-oh and Pokemon from there. Yet some how have no connection to the place emotionally.
I don't understand the words coming out of your post....
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For me... it was Chrono Trigger. Dang. Those feels. I was like a legitimate grown-up!
Before that, TRU brought me X-Men, actually. Long before I knew there were comics, I got these weird guys in odd costumes and daggum loved the heck out of 'em. Oh! And Pirates of Darkwater - with but one exception, probably the individual toys I played with the longest, and with the second most varied set of characters I played with.
The first, of course, was Captain Power - or rather, Major Hawk. I suspect that toy still survives: seriously the sturdiest construction I've ever seen on a small bit of plastic. He was Mega Man, most of the time, but also a GI Joe and a host of others. Such an amazing thing lasting so long as it did. But that one didn't come from TRU, so that's off topic.
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I can still remember getting my second cabbage patch doll there...
My first cabbage patch doll was sewn by my mom. (you could buy an official kit for this). When I wanted another, I was told I had to save up half the cost. I had a few relatives who gave me money for birthdays, and it took me several years to save up enough. When I went to the store and picked out the perfect looking cabbage patch baby for me, I was so excited. I just threw that doll out a year or so ago because her skin was covered in creepy splotches. It may have had something to do with the fake baby powder scent.
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I collected bayblades and then UBIFUNKYs (utterly garbage product but gosh darn I love em) and Bakugan and all the while yu-gi-oh and Pokemon from there. Yet some how have no connection to the place emotionally.I don't understand the words coming out of your post....
I think thats probably best.
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I can still remember getting my second cabbage patch doll there...
My first cabbage patch doll was sewn by my mom. (you could buy an official kit for this). When I wanted another, I was told I had to save up half the cost. I had a few relatives who gave me money for birthdays, and it took me several years to save up enough. When I went to the store and picked out the perfect looking cabbage patch baby for me, I was so excited. I just threw that doll out a year or so ago because her skin was covered in creepy splotches. It may have had something to do with the fake baby powder scent.
I never realised Cabbage Patch kids were so realistic they developed liver spots with age.
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Not surprising....
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My first memories of RPGs are 10-11 yro me buying the Shadowrun 1e Street Samurai Catalog and AD&D 2e Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover at our local Toys R' Us. I had neither games corebook(s); I just bought them because of the cool covers and because they looked neat when I flipped through the inside pages. After I'd read them both multiple times and earned more lawnmowing money, I came back and bought the corebooks. Later, I spent a lot of money building up my collection of Gen1 Transformers. I still can remember the awe of sub-5' tall me standing in those long rows and soaring big box store ceilings, seeing a seemingly endless display of toys. I hope TRU can stick around to keep giving kids that feeling.
I vaguely remember tru carrying rpg stuff.
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Also, as a kid, it was a huge moment to carry something up to the register, pay for it with my own money, and get the same respect from the cashier as an adult would in any other store.
There was also a moment of awareness as I watched kids get dumped at the TRU while their parents shopped at the mall across the street. I got so irritated, even angry, about how those kids badly behaved in the store.
i only had that happen once...
:(
remotely related toy story...
I went to see childs play (the chuckie movie) at what the moral guardians would consider too young an age and had to be accompanied by an adult. I was fine with it.
My mom on the other hand, came home and hid my little sisters my buddy doll in the attic...
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remotely related toy story...
I went to see childs play (the chuckie movie) at what the moral guardians would consider too young an age and had to be accompanied by an adult. I was fine with it.
My mom on the other hand, came home and hid my little sisters my buddy doll in the attic...
She hid it in the attic?!?
Isn't that like tossing a potato in your bottom kitchen drawer to keep it from sprouting?
She should've Hidden it In Your Closet.