"If all goes well, it looks like Toys R Us will be making a comeback"

[Super]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/toys-r-us...00821.html

Source: Shutterstock
If all goes well, it looks like Toys R Us will be making a comeback. The cancellation of the Toys R Us bankruptcy auction comes as the company’s main lenders say it wasn’t a “probable economic recovery.” What this really means is that no one was willing to make a large enough bid on the company’s assets to warrant going forward with the auction.
Now that the Toys R Us bankruptcy auction is no longer going forward, lenders are still looking for a way to get the maximum value out of the company. As a result, they are planning to revive both the Toys R Us and Babies R Us brands.
The resurrection plans for Toys R Us includes opening new retail stores. This may come as a surprise to some as the toy retailer shutdown all of its stores this year and went forward with a liquidation sale of its merchandise, shelves and just about everything else in its stores, reports Reuters.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/bus...507832002/

Toys R Back?
Not quite, but the first signs of how the financial firms who carved up Toys R Us plan to resurrect the iconic brand from the ashes of its bankruptcy have started to emerge.
The lenders who own a key piece of the old Toys R Us have revealed that they are keeping the corporate brand names and intellectual properties, including Geoffrey, the brand's giraffe mascot, and are dipping their toes back in the toy business with a wholesale venture called Geoffrey's Toy Box. 
They are also saying they hope to have pop-ups in place inside the stores of a regional mass merchant in time for the holidays, and to relaunch Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores down the road.
Geoffrey's Toy Box introduced itself to toy manufacturers and sellers Tuesday at the opening of the Dallas toy show, with an exhibit booth and a costumed Geoffrey mascot, who was spotted wearing a cape with the words "Back from Vacation." Toy manufacturers at the show were tweeting and posting on LinkedIn that they had spotted Geoffrey and Richard Barry, the former chief merchandising officer at Toys R Us who appears to be heading the new venture for the investors.
The new venture, for now, is being operated out of the Toys R Us headquarters building in Wayne, New Jersey, where a small number of former Toys R Us executives and employees continue to report to work.

My kids got all excited when they heard about this yesterday. I had to remind them that it might be years before they could go to a TRU retail store and that our relatively small town would probably never have one again.

I hate to say it but a lot of specialty retailers will only survive by operating fewer stores in areas with sufficient population and median family income to justify doing so.

[Super]

I wonder what these will look like in a few months and what they will have to offer. Who would a "regional mass merchant be let alone what is a regional mass merchant"?

"They are also saying they hope to have pop-ups in place inside the stores of a regional mass merchant in time for the holidays"

I guess a regional mass merchant would be like Fred Meyer as opposed to bigger international chain like Target.

[Super]

That may be true as we don't have Fred Meyer in my neck of the woods but we do have a Meijers which I believe is entirely a different store.