Virginia Postrel, Columnist

Why Toys 'R' Us Is More Than a Business Story

Its vast inventory prepared us for an age of infinite choice.

March 15, 2018 at 5:21 PM UTC

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and author, most recently, of “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

Stacked high.
Photograph: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

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I wasn’t a Toys ‘R’ Us kid.

By the time the big box wonderland arrived in my hometown, I was a 25-year-old business reporter living 900 miles away. So instead of conjuring up memories of dolls, bikes and video games, the chain’s imminent demise reminds me of what the world was like before it arrived: Most toys were available only around Christmas and even then the choices were limited unless you lived in a big city. We got my doll house in Atlanta.