Today on The Billfold, I look at the reasons why Millennials might not be shopping at Toys “R” Us.
Nicole asked for feedback and thoughts.
Hmm. I can maybe offer a few cents? I mean, apart from “milennials don’t have kids and don’t shop.” And apart from “we didn’t buy much for the baby and 80% of their stuff is secondhand.”
This franchise also exists in the UK. We visited a Toys “R” Us before we had a baby. Expecting parents are an incredibly desirable market, ready to spend lots of money and cling to trusted brands, so most brands were competing for our loyalty. We were researching carseats and prams – it’s one of those things that seems Incredibly Important before you have a baby, but less so after – and wanted to compare prices and brands. (It’s super important to kick the tires first, actually. There was one pram that was cheap and sounded perfect online, but its poor design interacted badly with my husband’s bad knee when he pushed it. You need to get both pram and carseat to fit into your specific car. And so on.)
So we go to ToysRUs and it’s just this wasteland. Everything was dirty and slightly broken.
Dr Glass really likes LEGO, and is always appalled by the fact that you can only get franchise LEGO now. We aren’t super into franchises or tie-in marketing or Gendered Plastic. I was raised without franchises or brand names, and he was raised before Marketing Subdivision became super-popular. So neither of us are super into the stuff on sale. the kid is getting his old LEGO from the 80s and 90s, which was objectively cooler – exciting pirate ships and Egyptology sets and dragon temples and so on – and they will probably be quite happy, because hey: LEGO.
But yeah, the LEGO section of ToysRUs is just all this repetitive franchise stuff. The figures are already named and everything. I know people like that sort of thing, and you can’t deny that it sells more merchandise, but I didn’t grow up with it and I don’t really want it in my own house.
We pushed the single unlocked pram in ToysRUs around in a desultory manner. We couldn’t try the car seats in our car because it wasn’t allowed. Everyone was irritated. There were like 3 other customers in the whole store on a Saturday, and everyone was pissed off. It all seemed super downmarket and grubby. Everything was gendered, plastic, and covered with a smirking girl from Frozen, or a horrible manic Minion, or a Star War. Those were the flavours. Frozen, Star War and Minion. Like, I didn’t even know who my fetus was and I was already expected to sell its loyalty to a specific line of merchandise. And to pay for the privilege. The lights were fluorescent, and the comm system blared mandatory advertising. The employees of ToysRUs seemed exploited and slightly hunted, and could not help us; they could not even help themselves; no help was coming, not for anybody. The colours were horrible and jangly. The educational toys were of the kind that grandparents give the baby – plastic toys that shout incomprehensibly at you – and the parents take the batteries out as soon as possible.
We left without buying a single thing, which is unusual in expecting parents, who are always buying weird things in a panic. It was like a mundane sort of hell.
Contrast to Mothercare, where the UK usually goes to buy its maternity, baby and child stuff. They always have a cafe – it’s a British thing – selling a bit of cake and tea in a teapot, so you can sit down and go “argh” when you’re heavily pregnant, and have some fucking sugar, and then get up again and shop some more. It’s usually clean and freshly decorated. There are lots of employees around, and they seem nicely treated – happy to answer questions and give advice. One lady spent an hour helping us understand about car seats, taking various ones out to our car, and then told us to go away and think about it, and come back another day. Considering that some people will spend hundreds on car seats and up £1500 on a pram (!!!!!!) (!!!!!) that’s the experience you WANT to have, when you’re opening your wallet and allowing a corporation to suck money out of it. Mothercare just seemed calmer, fancier and more pleasant. No leering plastic franchises or shouted advertising. They had product lines that are actually rather cute – choices like woodland animals, stars and planets, and fantasy stuff that wasn’t too irritating. The colours were trendy and muted; many items were of oak wood. The toys suggested wholesomeness and educational qualities – things like a dog on wheels that you pull on a string, or rainbow cups to stack. And the prices were the same.
So, the experience was just nicer. There’s nothing we want in ToysRUs.
I think my conclusion is that if I’m going to spend money I like to feel like it’s worth it, and I’m being respected, not hosed down for cash.
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