Toys R Us rises from the dead as Geoffrey’s Toy Box, stores to reopen this year

Been missing Toys R Us? Well, it’s back. No really, it is. TRU is rising up to fill it’s own void as Geoffrey’s Toy Box thanks to a group of investors.

We barely got a chance to miss you

If you’ve been following the saga of Toys R Us, then this no doubt comes as a shock. The toy store chain closed up shop in the US and other markets pretty recently, much to the disappointment of basically everyone. And I don’t mean just shoppers there, as TRU was the last of the big toy stores. Its closure left a massive gap in the retail landscape for toy companies. Some, like NECA, even forged new deals with big-boxers like Target to get product out there and into stores.

So how’d this all come about? Well, something called Geoffrey LLC is the holding company for all of the former TRU’s assets.  Almost since the former shop closed, an investment bank called Consensus has been working on getting everything together from the former company, in terms of rights and such. That includes not just the Toys R Us name, but also Babies R Us.

Basically, it seems that the situation shakes out to be that a group of investors are set to revive the brand here in the US. Whatever the case (for now anyway) Toys R Us will soon be back in action under the name of Geoffrey’s Toy Box.

It seems too that, from seeing some of the rumors that are floating around online, this new line of stores will be smaller and of the “store within a store” variety. That means they’ll be renting space inside of larger shops. It’s unknown if that’s set to be the business model going forward or if they plan on independent shops eventually.

It could also conceivably be that the Geoffrey’s Toy Box brand will be of this variety, while full on Toys R Us stores will be a separate thing. Those might still be a ways off, which would be why we’re hearing about these smaller locations first. Just a thought.

We’ll let you know when we hear something about locations and Geoffrey’s Toy Box’ opening day.