Happy New Year everybody. I hope 2023 brings good health, prosperity, and peace for each and every one of my blog readers.
Here is a post to start off the new year from my archives. This late 1990's era remodel was a very awesome look, it is sad that only two Houston area stores received this remodel. If you drive by today, sadly the building is now an unrecognizable Burlington. The other 2 TRU stores that I know had this same remodel were Sugarland Texas and Metairie Louisiana. The look of this store reminds me a bit of the old Katy Mills Mall with the late 1990's big and bold color schemes. While this store model is gone, Toys R Us lives on inside of Macy's locations.
The foyer area. Pure 1990's awesomeness!
As for the inside of the store there was a refresh at some point after the 1990's era remodel. With the exception of the flooring and large light fixtures, most of the 1990's era remodel is gone on the inside.
The tiles are the same from the remodel, but the colors inside are plain.
A few toys that caught my eye, giant magic 8-ball.
A TRU exclusive Loaded Lemons.
Babies R Us
From this point of view, this store looks just like any late era TRU store.
The back corner of the store in the Babies R Us department.
This late era TRU logo never really seemed to capture the magic of the TRU experience. Removing Geoffrey from the signage was a bad move IMO.
A look through the shelving and into the back room of the Babies R Us side of the store.
The large light fixtures in the front of the store were a part of the 1990's era remodel.
Bike department was pretty well picked through at this point.
The floor still has the shape of the 1990's era remodel. The center of the store was an over with low shelves to see all the way across the store. At some point these were removed in favor of the high shelves that every other TRU store had.
An unbelievable amount of the 250ct. NERF bullets. Imagine the mess this would make in a tournament.
The collectibles area facing the electronics counter.
I remember these bouncy platforms; they were a broken arm or leg waiting to happen.
More empty shelves.
The front of the store.
The collectors area had these bulky signs.
More of the front of the store.
A neat walk through in the collectors area.
Now for my favorite department, video games.
A left-over advertisement for the Nintendo Switch.
More views of the checkouts from the electronics counter.
A late-era TRU attempt at capturing sales from the drone craze. Thankfully the quality of drones has gotten so much better than what they had to offer in 2018.
A wide-view of the electronics department from the checkout area.
A store-closing advertisement.
More views from the front of the store near the checkouts.
Toys R Us branded batteries.
A really nice-looking view of the store closing sale flyer.
Happy New Year to you and your readers! It's great to have another year on the blog! I have to admit to not being all that familiar with this design of Toys R Us stores. It's a pretty neat look though and I think you're right that one is reminded a bit of the old Katy Mills and also perhaps of Incredible Universe. There is a bit of a 1990s overload in the exterior front of the store and the foyer.
ReplyDeleteInside the store, things are less spectacular, but one can tell this was still a nicer than average TRU. It is a shame this was turned into a Burlington, but at least it is not sitting empty. Granted, retail around Baybrook Mall generally does pretty well.
Those TRU brand batteries look like they might be rebadged Duracells. They are probably rebadged Duracell Procells more specifically, Duracell's brand of bulk batteries which might not quite be up to the standards of regular coppertops. For a good liquidation sale price, I might have picked up a few of those. I still miss the good deals on Sears DieHard alkaline batteries. Those really worked well for me and the price was usually right. I still have some more DieHard AAAs, but once those are over, I don't think I have any more.
I don't know if this is still the case, but I wonder if toymakers still like to annoy kids, and their parents even more so, by selling toys that don't include the batteries. I know the toy stores, and Radio Shack, liked to take advantage of this as being an opportunity to sell batteries. Back in the late 1980s at least, I remember Kay-Bee putting large stickers on their toys advertising that Kay-Bee sold Panasonic brand batteries. Those Panasonic batteries were actually pretty good and I remember going to Kay-Bee a time or two just to buy those batteries since they were a rare place that sold them!
I came across this post mixed up with some other photos when I did the cleaning up a few months back. I wish I had some photos of the store when it was first remodeled. The Sugarland store had this same design, but the exterior had to match the rest of the shopping center. The plain brick and plain signage is a common theme for this area.
DeleteI did get some TRU batteries towards the end of the sale. I might even have some TRU 9 volts in my smoke detectors still going. I am down to a few AA Diehards and some C volts as well. I picked up the AA's at the Hometown store. I wonder if Ace Hardware is carrying the Diehard batteries now. When I went last month to a nearby Ace, they had Diehard car accessories.
I remember the days of the signage that said, "Don't forget the batteries". I am glad the larger versions of remote-controlled cars had the rechargeable batteries. The battery sales were probably very profitable for the toy and electronics stores. I haven't had too many issues with store brand batteries except for the crappy ones they sell at the dollar stores. Speaking of Kay Bee Toys, I wonder what ever happened to the reboot that was supposed to happen around 2019.
Unfortunately, at least in the early days of the Willowbrook Mall Sears Hometown Store, they didn't keep batteries in stock or else I would have bought them. I think Humble had them, but the Humble store had better inventory than the Willowbrook store. Those Sears DieHard batteries don't last as long as Duracells and Energizers, especially in high-drain devices, but they last almost as long for a fraction of the price. They are really good for things like remotes and clocks.
DeleteThe biggest reason why I like those Sears batteries is that they rarely leak. Perhaps because the name brand batteries last longer, they also seem more prone to leaking. I had so many Duracells and Energizers leak at one time in the 2010s, ruining some of the things they were in, that I stopped buying them for a while. Rayovac batteries seemed even worse than the other two big brands. The Sears batteries were more dependable in that manner. I suppose I'll have to try some other store brands to see if I can find an acceptable replacement for the Sears batteries.
It looks like the proposed Kay-Bee reboot in 2019 never happened due to a lack of funding. I'm sure the pandemic and further movement of shopping online has ended any hope of that revival, but perhaps the name will resurface somewhere at some point. It won't be the same as the old Kay-Bee, that's for sure. I believe that at one time, Kay-Bee was owned by the same company, Melville (CVS), that also owned Circus World toys, a toy store that was also at Willowbrook Mall in the 1980s.
I don't recall the Willowbrook Pasadena store having batteries. I think the older locations like Nacogdoches and Cleveland had them, but they must have been old. I know the original Sears Willowbrook store had them as they
Deletewere closing.
Speaking of leaking batteries, I found a Kirkland battery leaking in my good Walkman a few days ago. Thankfully I was able to clean the gunk out and the corrosion on the contacts was minimal. I guess it has been a while since I used that Walkman.
You are right that Kay Bee and Circus World were owned by the same company at one time. I vaguely remember when they started closing their stores at malls where both brands existed. Deerbrook and Greenspoint lost Circus World, but the Esplanade in Kenner lost Kay Bee first if I remember correctly. Too bad we didn't get to see a modest reboot like we saw initially with Toys R Us.
The Webster Toysrus was completely torn down for the Burlington.🥺
ReplyDeleteI see, that explains things better for me. I had no idea they pulled the whole building down for the new Burlington.
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