There's a toys r us one city over, a place that I have visited far more often lately because of my granddaughter. I actually did most of her Christmas shopping there, the prices were shockingly better than Amazon on the items she asked for.
Toys r us has slowly been dying, you could see it happening when my daughter was young, they carried waaaaay too much debt for far too long and could never un-bury themselves. It wasn't the Internet, they were in trouble before Amazon came around. They couldn't invest in better stores, employees, and so forth. You knew that someday they'd just collapse.
The big downside is that the small and medium toy companies are greatly screwed. Walmart and others already have or will expand their toy section, but they usually only have shelf space for the really big players.
LEGO might really get hit, toys r us owes them a boatload of money and their sales haven't been great lately.
Like many brick and mortars it is the end of an era, and a bit of a sad one for me. I spent a ton of money on video games back in the Sega Genesis days, bought my daughter toys and strollers and car seats, and now the same for my granddaughter. Even as an older dude I enjoy walking the aisles looking for something a bit different, not just some blister packed mass produced toys.
Maybe somebody can come in and save some aspect of the brick and mortar toy store. Call it Al's toy barn and wear a chicken suit, or something.
