Crossed over into Canada this past week with my daughters who were on a school break and was pretty shocked to see what was happening when we made our usual stop at the Toys R Us in St. Catherines, Ont.
Most of the action figure aisles were gone with product pushed back toward the rear of the store and basically condensed with the toy car stuff. In its place were books, records and signs for an in-store HMV section. (An Old Canadian record shop.)
It looked like they'd just started recently with the transformation so I don't know what the final layout will be but they had much less action figure stock out than was there on previous trips.
With Toys R Us gone in the states, it's cool to be able to occasionally visit stores across the border (and see a lot of action figures in person, actually out on shelves.) This just gave me Media Play vibes and we know how that went.
They guy who owns toysrus also owns sunrise records and is one of the biggest distributors in Canada, he's a prick and has killed tru, they charge what was retail to the distributor, so the figure prices are insane, Hasbro, neca, Lego etc, all massively over priced, the HMV thing is a weak attempt at diversifying, I hope it blows up and fails. Feel bad for the workers but all the woes are solely to blame on greed
I don't see TRU in Canada lasting too much longer. Prices aren't only rising because of scumbaggery (that is definitely one reason) but also because without the buying power of a couple hundred locations in the US, they can't negotiate better prices like a Walmart or Target. I don't really know any collectors that regularly get their figures from TRU. You might swing in there to see if anything is on sale/clearance, or if they have something you just can't find anywhere else.
But they barely even stock, for example, Black Series figures. Because no sane person buys Black Series figures there when there's a better selection, with better pricing, across the street at GameStop. TRU -long ago- priced themselves out of being a legitimate contender for being your one-stop toy shop. And it's only getting worse as "inflation" crushes us, wages stagnate, and corporations both at the retail level and manufacturing level get greedier.
As it is, the reality seems to be that loads of Canadians are very drastically cutting back their toy buying, or even stopping altogether, because the disparity in pricing between here and the US is such that collecting while living here is basically not feasible for many who -could- do it if they were in the US.
So yeah; prices keep going up WHILE the market itself for collectibles and toys is dying. TRU is screwed. So they're gonna try to get you to come in to pick up a Marvel Legends Captain America and maybe a Five Finger Death Punch CD at the same time? Fuck off. That's dumb as shit.
As a Canadian, I can correct you and say that HMV actually started in the UK. 🙂
Whoops. I just knew HMV from Canada. There was a pretty big store on Yonge Street in Toronto I used to like going to back in the day.
And yes, while it's cool to be able to go to an actual Toys R Us after what happened here in the U.S., I can't remember ever actually buying anything in all the times I've been going to the Ontario store. That markup ...
For a little while TRU under the new owner, mostly the last holiday season, had lowered their prices to the current Canadian market. This was after being the highest priced place in Canada (even higher than single store online places). So they dropped prices back down and had some pretty significant sales during the holidays and people (myself included) thought they had turned a corner and were course correcting.
However that didn't last and now their prices are back to being the highest in the market and sales have all but dried up for action figures again. If this is the model they are going with in the future I agree they probably won't be around for very much longer. At least as an option for action figures.
The TRU Canadian company own what's left of FYE here in the States. There was a time when fye's price were a little high, but reasonable. Now 6" Hasbro figures are in the $45-$50. Didn't realize there was a connection until fairly recently. I thought it was just bad mall store economics.
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