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Each autumn, Spirit Halloween takes over vacant strip mall storefronts across the U.S., adorning them with fake spider webs and skeleton stickers on the windows.
Nearly a decade after going bankrupt, Toys R Us is taking a similar approach.
The beloved toy retailer is staging 20 pop-up shops and 10 full-time flagship stores, just in time for Christmas shopping.
A temporary location outside New Orleans was the first to throw open its doors on Tuesday.
For the seven decades before its painful ending, the chain was a shrine to childhood games.
Its warehouse-sized aisles promised endless shelves of Barbie dolls, Nerf guns, and video game consoles stacked high enough to make parents wince.
A flagship in Times Square was a tourist attraction in its own right, complete with a Ferris wheel whirling under fluorescent lights.
But the toy chain spectacularly collapsed in 2018 under the weight of $5billion in debt, forcing all 800 shops to permanently shutter.
Toys R Us is opening 30 new stores – including 20 pop-up locations – across the US as it attempts to recapture some sales before the holiday season
The main Spirit Halloween location in Times Square once included a Ferris Wheel. Unfortunately, this attraction had to close in 2015 when rent soared to $42 million annually.
In 2001, Michelle Williams, Beyoncé, and Kelly Rowland, members of Destiny’s Child, showcased their Barbie dolls at a Toys R Us store.
At that period, the business was losing ground to online retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart, which provided a wider selection of toys at better prices, along with the ease of doing grocery shopping during quick gift runs.
In 2015, the competition forced Toys R Us to close cash-burning stores, like the Times Square flagship, which had $42million in annual rent payments.
Analysts also noted that the chain’s other locations were poorly merchandised, mismanaged, and filled with pricey but uninspiring toys.
According to Mark Cohen, a retail studies professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, ‘Toys R Us never made a strong effort to integrate experiential shopping into their locations.’
‘There was no consequential effort to re-imagine themselves, to present themselves in a more engaging and attractive way.’
But nostalgia never really let go.
When the last of the stores shut down in 2018, an image of Geoffrey the giraffe holding a suitcase in a deserted store spread across the internet, leading millions to lament the end of a beloved brand.
In 2021, brand management firm WHP Global bought the rights to Toys R Us and began carefully reviving it with a handful of mall locations, including at New Jersey’s American Dream Mall and Minnesota’s Mall of America.
The popular toy retailer is well known for rows of endless Barbie dolls – but retail analysts said it had too many undifferentiated products
In 2018, after closing all of its stores, Toys R Us posted this picture of its mascot leaving an empty store with a suitcase – it went viral, showing investors that Americans still wanted the brand to stay
Spirit Halloween pops into defunct retail stores for three months and sells costumes before Halloween – the company said it raked in $1.1billion last year on the model
They partnered with Macy’s, opening dozens of small shops in the department stores.
Now, the company is betting it can recapture some of that magic in time for the holiday season with its new stores.
‘Pop-up stores are a natural for Toys R Us,’ Carol Spieckerman, a retail expert, told the Daily Mail.
‘That said, the toy business will be particularly brutal this holiday season, with tariffs, dips in customer spending, and relentless competition.’
Now, the company hopes that it can mimic Spirit Halloween’s approach. Last year, the costume retailer reported $1.1billion in revenue.
Toys R Us executives are confident similar concepts will work for the Christmas season.
‘As we head into the most magical time of the year, Toys R Us is reaching more kids and families than ever before,’ Kimberly Miller, the company’s global chief marketing officer, said.
WHP didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
