The Rise and Fall of Toys R Us. Toys R Us was a large-scale toy store retailer which also sold clothing and baby products. It was founded originally in New Jersey in 1948, as a response to the baby boomer period following WWII by Charles Lazarus specializing in kid’s furniture. It later changes to focus primarily on children’s toys and is known since 1957 as Toys-R-Us.
In its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, it was the most important toy store in the country, if not the world. Known as a “commodity killer” business, it grew continuously and at its peak had over 30,000 employees, 800 stores in the US, and 800 internationally.
In 1994, Lazarus retired as CEO. In 1998 and a revolving door of CEOs followed. In 1998 the general retailer Walmart replaced ToysRUs as the No.1 toy retailer in the US and a rocky road of decline followed. The company was sold by way of a leveraged buy-out in 2005 to a private equity consortium. The company eventually filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in September 2017. In March 2018 it entered liquidation.