Here are a few photos to update the Baytown Toys R Us location. I had already covered this store in detail, click here. I went in one last time to pick up my shopping basket that I reserved. I took a handful of photos as well.
This is a short post, my next one is gonna be a really strange update to an old mall we have covered before. Stay tuned!
This is the entrance to Toys R Us from Babies R Us.
Video games were pretty much wiped out.
The electronics had been consolidated onto the shelves in the electronics area.
Random photo of the action figure aisles.
The bikes were all over the place in boxes, with most of the assembled bikes gone.
A view of the Nerf display.
The train aisle with hot wheels in the far background.
The Babies R Us customer service counter.
That's it for this short update, stay tuned for more posts.
I very much remember the post you did about this Baytown Toys R Us a few years ago. In fact, I even cited that original post when I did the guest post at HHR last year about Vintage Aerial photos. I'm not sure if you saw that one, but Vintage Aerial has a link to an aerial photo of the Baytown TRU in 1988: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2021/10/08/digging-through-the-photo-box-1980s-houston-retail-on-vintage-aerial/
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see some photos of this store with the majority of the inventory still on the shelves. It's interesting to see how these photos compare to the previous TRUs we saw recently where the stores were mostly empty. These TRUs feel quite open when they were mostly liquidated, but here in these photos, there is a greater sense of the departments and such.
I wonder if TRU ever had all 11 checkouts open. It seems like the only time they'd probably need that is on Black Friday and maybe on the last weekend before Christmas. Perhaps these stores had an excessive amount of registers just like Fry's Electronics had especially in their later years. Speaking of Fry's and baskets, Mike from HHR has an upcoming post about a Houston retail establishment with an interesting historical twist. On top of that, some of Fry's baskets ended up being rehomed there. I'm not sure when Mike will be publishing that, but it'll probably be up later this week or next week.
Just to comment on something you said in the recent Palms Center post, I wanted to congratulate you on getting 6000 comments. Also, it looks like the blog surpassed 1,200,000 views as well. Those are very impressive numbers and it seems that the comments and visitors continue to increase at the blog. Like with the recent Palms Center and Bunker Hill TRU/CompUSA posts, it's fascinating to look back at the old posts and see how much things have changed in retail just within the time that this blog has been covering the local retail scene.
That photo of the old Toys R Us is certainly a blast from the past. I read the post about the store, I missed it when it came out originally. There were a few Toys R Us locations that had the set of registers with one line leading to the set like what you see at some TJMaxx, Ross, Best Buy and Academy stores now. There were only 6-8 registers in those setups, and I never saw all of those occupied. 11 registers was a bit excessive.
DeleteI saved a few Fry's baskets from what I thought was going to be the trash dump. I am glad some retailers picked them up to keep them going. You just never know when and where you will see these old baskets pop up as we saw with the Auchan baskets at the Uniform Store in Greenspoint Mall.
I appreciate the congratulations, I never thought the blog would hit the numbers it has. I also thought I would have lost interest in the blog, but there has been so many changes to cover over the years. In my latest post for example, the University Mall has changed completely since we first visited the mall for the blog.