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Toys 'R' Us Founder Charles Lazarus Dies at 94
- jordanmoconnor 9y agoJust realized the phonetic connection between Lazarus and Toys 'R' Us.
- et-al 9y agoMight I suggest we link to the Bloomberg article which Kotaku references? It offers a longer biography of the founder: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-22/charles-lazarus-who-founded-toys-r-us-retailer-dies-at-94 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-22/charles-l...
- jessaustin 9y agoThat is a nice article. What a strange maneuver from his second wife! He must have been desperately in love, to sign a prenup like that. ...their only regrets were employees who would be losing their jobs, suppliers who would be losing their best customer and all the kids who won’t grow up with Toys “R” Us. Ugh, if my nieces and nephews are any indication, kids will still get way too many toys even without this store.
- erickhill 9y agoI'll never forget going to Toys R Us and walking down the computer/video game aisle. It was vast. Wall-to-wall Atari, Commodore, Vectrex (!!) ... walls of just game boxes you could look over. Then pull a slip of paper out and walk to a literal Cage where you could get the real deal. That place was magical to me as a kid. (1980s, if it isn't obvious.)
- systematical 9y agoLate 80s early 90s for me with Nintendo games. I remember how happy I was to get Captain Skyhawk.
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoThanks for the flashback, I totally forgot about the slip of paper part!
- gedy 9y agoMan, the Vectrex, I bought one on clearance from Toys R Us when they were discontinued in 83/84. Such a fun console
- bartread 9y agoI've recently got back into retro gaming, having somewhat tired of the cost and constant updates to modern titles, and looked into picking up a Vectrex because I never had one as a kid: working examples are now going for £900+ in the UK so I dropped the idea. EDIT: Having said that, I just checked eBay again, and it seems like availability is up and prices are down. A bunch of auctions under £100, and some Buy It Nows for around £200. Hmm.
- stevekemp 9y agoOur (richer) cousins got bored of their vextrex, so it passed to my siblings and I. At the time I thought it was near magical, not needing to take over the family-television, or load games from cassette. I still remember the fun of playing games with the wrong overlay placed over the screen. For those who don't know the vextrex used vector graphics, only in white, and alongside the cartridges each game contained a transparent piece of plastic with colours, score-labels, etc, which you placed over the screen. The wikipedia article has a couple of brief pictures that make this more clear than my early-morning words could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex
- damon_c 9y agoIf you get one, there is a multi game cartridge available. Highly recommended! Pole Position on Vectrex is always fun at parties.
- evv 9y ago90's kid here. Thank you for reminding me that I got my GameBoy color from Toys R Us.. what a great day that was! Kids these days will keep on getting toys and video games, but the Amazon experience will never compare to the Toys R Us wonderland.
- taneq 9y agoThat feeling of grabbing a Sega game box off the shelf (after agonizing about which game for what felt like forever!) and taking it up to the counter, where they'd take the box, turn around to a filing cabinet behind them, and pull out the actual cartridge and put it in the box. It felt like dreams coming true.
- dang 9y agoSure. Changed from https://kotaku.com/toys-r-us-founder-has-died-1824003155?IR=T https://kotaku.com/toys-r-us-founder-has-died-1824003155?IR=....
- neonate 9y agohttp://archive.is/FCZcE http://archive.is/FCZcE
- csours 9y agoI can't even imagine how heartbreaking this would be.
- aphextron 9y agoAll in a day’s work for Bain Capital.
- jjeaff 9y agoThey have more wins than losses. And that's saying something, considering they only take on highly distresses companies.
- jacobolus 9y agoWhere 'win' means they cut quality to shit, sell off assets, fire a bunch of people and hire the cheapest contractors to do the work, everyone good leaves, and the company reputation is forever ruined, ... but Bain comes out ahead. And 'loss' means, well, pretty much the same thing.
- engine_jim 9y agoLazarus. He should be back in a few days.
- nikanj 9y agoThis is neither the time, nor the place.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dmix 9y agoWhat poor timing, oh well he had a great life and great accomplishments during his prime. > saddled with more than $5 billion in debt Wow, I haven't yet followed the story of Toys R Us but that is a huge amount of debt. I can't imagine what severe mismanagement happened at the company to allow this. Must have had some ex-government workers managing finances (/s)... > Since Lazarus stepped down as chief executive officer in 1994 Ah, so it was well after he left. It's sad to see your creation falter but it wasn't his baby anymore. Many great companies end up failing after their original founders leave. I'd be curious to read more about how they messed it up so badly.
- xigency 9y agoTwo words: leveraged buyout. I'm not sure what purpose they serve other than to create debt. Working at a company that was acquired by a smaller fish with a $4 billion loan, it made things painful when cuts were constantly made to pay interest on debt. Somehow, the situation benefited the shareholders that signed off on the deal.
- jackfraser 9y agoWell yeah, it's pretty straightforward. Company A borrows $4 billion; it's leveraged against the company they're going to buy; they buy Company B, paying out the shareholders, and B merges into A and keeps the debt. I'm having a struggle with whether this seems moral or not. B is saddled with a big debt, and employees of company B may suffer as a result of this (anything from losing bonuses or profit sharing opportunities, to losing headcount, or having the very future of the company put into question). The new owners also have to live with this situation, while the old owners skip merrily away with their profits gleaned from the future work that will be done to pay down the loan. This seems negative, but has to be balanced with the fact that the shareholders of company B are the owners of the company, and it is their decision to do as they wish; if they're offered a certain sum for their shares, it's their choice to take it. It's unfortunate that this comes with blindness to the future impact of that action, but this may be a necessary or at least presently contingent artifact of capitalism.
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- lovemenot 9y agoPerhaps Lazarus's death in this season might presage his company's resurrection.
- drawkbox 9y ago"I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid"...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jonbarker 9y agoI still don't think online will take off soon as a popular way to buy for toys. There is a reason why almost all toys come semi demo-able with buttons you can push and open-ish boxes. Amazon is apparently behind in apparel for a similar reason, you can't try anything on!
- danvoell 9y agoI respectfully disagree. I think the only thing going for toy stores is last-minute shoppers. Sure if you get a toy in a kids hands, they're going to want it. Which is exactly why I don't want to go to toy stores with my kids. I can find new toys online that my kids like instead of being forced to purchase whatever mass consumer toy is in my face when I walk into toyRus because they are getting a bigger kickback on it.
- swalsh 9y agoMy son just had his birthday, we took him there and gave him a $20 (we got him a few other things, but we wanted to teach him about money) and let him choose how to spend it. You could do that online, but when you get to run around the store looking at the toys, it's clearly more fun for him. There are a few bespoke toy stores around me, but Toys R Us is his favorite.
- dugluak 9y agoI admired Toys R Us. It was a complete shock and utter disbelief when I heard the news of the bankruptcy. Because the way the stores are run it never felt that way, although the question that how do they manage to do all this was always there in the back of my mind. I wonder why, if they are so much in debt and not doing well, nothing much has changed inside the store over years. Its the same huge store with loads of stuff pouring out of every corner. I don't know why they didn't consider cutting down costs at the store level.
- menacingly 9y agoI've been having an interesting loop of thought about this chain's bankruptcy. Obviously, I'm nostalgic about it, and it's sad, but I am hesitant to say that a national chain going away is some cultural blow. Given my age, I tend to think it's sad that shopping is less of a social event now. However, I don't think it's a core spiritual need that we go somewhere and spend money together. In fact, I'm not even sure it's a positive. If people are taking care of their shopping at Amazon, maybe that's more time to do real social stuff and not consumerism masquerading as social stuff.