The store used its mascot, a loveable giraffe named Geoffrey, in TV spots for the company beginning in 1973 soon he was a TV commercial staple, even acquiring a wife, Gigi, and children Junior and Baby Gee. TV helped consolidate Toys ‘R’ Us’s brand, too. Companies like Mattel could now market their newest offerings to kids directly, which fueled demand for the toys Lazarus stocked. As television reached more and more households, Toys ‘R’ Us benefited from advertising by toy manufacturers. And department stores, which had once relied heavily on seasonal toy sales, soon realized that Toys ‘R’ Us had created a year-round demand they weren’t able to serve as effectively.Ī woman and her child shopping in a New Jersey Toys R Us which features their mascot, Geoffrey the giraffe, 1996. Mom ’n’ pop toy stores buckled, unable to captivate children with the sheer promise of discovery offered by Toys ‘R’ Us’s large inventories. This made Toys ‘R’ Us into what retail historians recognize as the first “category killer”-a company that so completely dominates its retail category that it drives all of its competition out of business. Lazarus bought and sold so many toys that he was able to negotiate contracts to buy toys for cheaper than his competitors. As Japan rebuilt its economy, it began to produce inexpensive toys, like tin robots and cars and stuffed animals, that Lazarus purchased cheaply and in bulk. Potato Head to Barbie to the Easy-Bake Oven. The 1950s and 1960s ushered in some of the most iconic toys of all time, from Mr. The store’s bare-bones appearance didn’t seem to matter to consumers, who were entranced by the toys within.Īnd what toys. While other toy shops had display cases and decorative interiors, Toys ‘R’ Us had concrete or tile flooring (better for the bottom line) and rows of toys laid out next to each other, grocery store-style. Lazarus’ idea was deceptively simple: build a supermarket for toys. Other Jewish industry superstars include Isaac Heller, who converted military surplus into toys for boys in the 1950s, Elliot Handler, the founder of Mattel, and Milton Levine, creator of the wildly popular “Milton’s Ant Farm,” which was a hit with kids during the 1950s and 1960s.ġ970s Toys R Us ad, still associated with the Children’s Bargain Town name. “The modern American toy industry was really created by Jewish soldiers coming back from the war,” he says. Gottlieb sees Lazarus as part of a bigger wave of entrepreneurship that took hold in the post-war years. “What Lazarus really captured was this sense of American abundance after the war and after all those years of depression,” says Richard Gottlieb, founder of Global Toy Experts and an authority on the toy business. Lazarus’ stores, on the other hand, were orders of magnitude larger than their competitors, and presented a smorgasbord of thousands of different toys.īig-box stores like Toys ‘R’ Us astonished the era’s consumers, who had simply never seen stores that big and crammed with merchandise. Most toy stores were small and family-run, and only carried a limited line of products. The new megastore took a supermarket-style approach to toy selling, which distinguished it from every other toy store in existence. In 1957, he got out of the baby furniture business, renamed his company Toys ‘R’ Us and created the first ever big-box toy store. He had an idea that was bigger than Children’s Bargain Town or any kids’ store he had ever seen-a massive store filled with every toy in existence. He started selling a few inexpensive toys, then added to his inventory as they proved popular.īut Lazarus wasn’t content to stop with a single store. Specializing in baby goods, it only began selling toys once Lazarus realized customers didn’t come back for more strollers, high chairs and other baby goods with their second child. Lazarus opened his first store, Children’s Bargain Town, in Washington, D.C. It was the end of an era for the store that once held a lock on the entire toy industry and made toy shopping-once a seasonal treat-into a regular family outing. In March 2017, the 70-year-old business announced that it would call it quits. Now, the retail giant has been forced into bankruptcy, the victim of a retail model it helped pioneer. Once a retail juggernaut, the store dominated the entire toy industry-and children’s imaginations-by driving its competitors out of existence. Those instincts didn’t just help Lazarus capitalize on the baby boom: They helped originate Toys ‘R’ Us.
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