There is so much to write about right now that it is getting hard to whittle it down to one topic per post. But between the failure of the auto bailout, Bush's gutting of the endangered species act, Scientists being able to take an image from someone's mind and display it on a monitor, and the MPAA asking Obama to filter the internet and adopt a three strikes and your out policy to those caught (or just accused, or just winked at by the MPAA) of downloading or sharing illegal copyrighted material and force other foreign governments to do the same. But instead, Let's chat about K&B Toys closing their doors for good. I'm not really surprised by this, as the economy is terrible and K&B have always been overpriced by the very nature of having to pay mall rent for most of their locations. But still, K&B was my reason for going to the mall with my Mom when I was a kid. In fact the one I went to had two of them at either end with slightly different merchandise. I would travel from one to the other to see what was the best deal I could get for my 4 dollar a week allowance. And I got some cool deals, not the least of which is an original Scott Bernard and his cyclone from when Robotech was a staple of afternoon cartoon blocs. But today, the trend in toys is towards video games and K&B has never been able to compete in that area despite most video game and console prices being set by the industry so you don't ever really get new games cheeper at Walmart, Target or Gamestop, but it always seemed that K&B marked their prices up from that and were always slow to reduce when the item didn't sell. And so, rather than embracing a model of aggressively going after video game market, just like Chrysler and possibly GM not really going after modern car markets, K&B is done. So long K&B, the 12 year-old me will miss you.
The Rational Moderate
2 comments:
While I was not fortunate enough to have a KB Toys at either end of the mall my mother and I frequented, it was the highlight of my visits to the mall. How can you walk past the flipping puppy or crawling solider tied to the sign in front of the store? Who can resist searching though 3 isles of toys so tightly packed together that even the store clerks cannot tell you where the new Luke Skywalker action figure with the lightsaber slashing action is? Or searching the bargain bin of Atari 2600 games looking for the last remaining copy of Football in existence? KB Toys... you will be missed. RIP
Dude, I always wondered why you had the coolest toys that I had never seen before! While you found a way to make your money work for you, I'd stand in front of the Gi Joe's wishing I had enough to buy one and therefore left the store empty handed. KB Toys was cool because it was a real toy store, and it could be found in nearly every mall, unlike Toys R Us which you had to make a special trip to. Price's be damned...too bad it's what killed them in the end.
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