Toys R Us has gone into administration, putting 3,000 UK jobs at risk.
Administrators have been appointed to begin "an orderly wind-down" of the UK's biggest toy retailer following the failure to find a buyer.
They said that all 105 Toys R Us stores will remain open until further notice.
Joint administrator Simon Thomas said: "Whilst this process is likely to affect many Toys R Us staff, whether some or all of the stores will close remains to be decided."
Looks like the next round of blood letting in the retail world is about to start with both Toys R Us collapsing and Maplins about to follow them.
I haven't been in a Toys R Us store for decades, but I did go in them while I was still a kid and in fact went in my local store when it first opened in 1985. Only wish I was younger, becuase for a young kid, I imagine it would've been something akin to heaven with toys stacked up high to the roofs.
My first purchase in the store was one of the board games that was going around at the time and I got a bike a little later. But they did have one innovation during the 80s that was well ahead of its time and it was called a PCTV. It was as it sounds, a portable tv with a computer (a full IBM PC) built into the base of the tv. Just what I needed, the best of both worlds!
I had all Commodore computers during the 80s and I eventually wanted to upgrade to a proper "adult" computer, the so called IBM PCs, so I went on a mission one day to the Toys R Us store to buy the PCTV.
Like many things in the store, you could actually play/use their stuff, so I took quite some time having a good use of the PCTV and it was very innovative, with a interface akin to a smartphone today. You turned it on and you got screen of options in which you could choose to watch tv, record a show, play a computer game etc, all from the one interface. Fantastic, except it wasn't...
Although the idea was well ahead of its time, the actual product was way behind other products on the market at that time. The picture quality of the tv was poor and the processor in the unit was terrible, not even sure it was a x386 let alone a x486. I had my own computer game with me and the PCTV struggled with it. The graphics of the game on the PCTV were awful. I decided not to purchase it. It was neither a good tv or a good computer, so it was the worst of both worlds, not the best.
That was my last visit to Toys R Us store and that was around the late 80s.
Have you ever been into a Toys R Us store. Will you miss them?