oh forgot hohoho looooooooool actually i loved that store untill i couldnt do anything with that gift card

i have a gift card from kb toys for $25,00 and when i found out that the store was closing i went to buy any thing and use the gift card will i couldnt ues it because they had there own reason and now i cant do anything with this stupid gift card

Noboddy thinks in the people that work there they had family and things to pay I work at KB Toys and i like what i do there we make a lot of kids and parents happy and the only thing your are doing is talking bad about them you really do not now what customer service and great associates are.Sorry that its what i think

Forget MASK... Starcom is where it's at.

Of course, here's reason number #1 why they are back in Chapter 11:

GeoTrax Airport Playset: $54.97 @ KB
GeoTrax Airport Playset: $42.99/$44.99 @ Wal-Mart and Target

Bought @ Target for $34.99 on Black Friday

However in recent years, even their online selection has gone sharply downhill.

My husband and I took the kids to the mall last night, and as always, they asked to go to KB before we left. I'm sure their interest in KB is strictly because it is the only dedicated toy store in the mall, since they have NEVER asked us to buy a toy from KB (which is practically unheard of, since they're known to beg for crappy convenience store toys), nor do they argue or pout when I tell them it's time to leave. That to me says as much about KB as anything.

I'm sad to see KB go because it means more jobs will be lost, but when 6 and 7 year-old kids aren't even enticed by it, you know it's doomed to fail.

Everyone keeps saying "But they were so fun to walk around in"..

Maybe they should have a cover charge to enter the store and not worry so much about selling toys.

I've always found the KB store annoying because of those toys that have that walk around in that glass box making all of them noises. Everytime I walk in the store I get a headache. The ones near me have been closed down for over 10 years.

@Skunky:

I think everyone's selection of plushies is dismal, try finding things like normal looking Orcas and any kind of Fox. Are plushies going the way of playing make-believe?

@maciejb:

That wasnt going out of business, that was a series of lawsuits:

[en.wikipedia.org]

@AtomicPlayboy:
I used to work at Radio Shack here in Canada before they were bought out - the markup on the junk they sell is crazy. Its usually a 300% markup. It showed on the sales tills what the cost was and what the sale price was. Every time i rang up a sale i really wanted to tell the customer how much he was getting ripped off.

Yes... GI Joe... at least we still have that.

@joeblevins: yeah, every KB around here (we have a KB toy works and a smaller KB in a mall) is...dirty. their tiled floors are yellowed and cracked, water stains on the ceiling, stuff is dusty and cluttered. it's just not the most appealing place to walk into

Too bad the fun of toys is lost on so many kids today.

On a positive note, GI Joes are still around.

@Shadowfire: That explains it.

but that was probably some other mall-based toy store i was thinking of.

@UniComp:

They were alwasy fun to wander in...I'll miss them. Those sort of stores in general seem to be slowly caving toeither of the extremes of super-high class boutiques, or to big-box "everything under one roof" retail.

Pittsfield isn't a really fun area to be in, though.

Filing for Chapter 11 protection rather than Chapter 7 liquidation allows a company to retain more control over selling off assets. Under Chapter 7, the court immediately appoints a trustee to take over the case.

@zlionsfan: The KB toys in my hometown mall sold videogames when I was a kid. This was before Gamestop, Wal-Mart and the like. I guess they gave that up after awhile, too bad I guess.

This will hit Pittsfield pretty hard, I'm afraid. :(

Cap guns kick fucking ass. I've always been fond of them since I was a kid. We'd pretend to be cops, robbers, and especially cowboys because I saw Young Guns II right around that time. Just a few years ago I went to the OK Corral with a friend of mine from NYC and we blasted the shit out of each other. Must've been funny to see 3 20+ year olds running around shooting each other.
Anyway, I usually buy my cap guns and caps at the supermarket in the cheapy toy section. They almost always only have 1, but you of course need at a minimum of 2 (if you don't already have one). Otherwise, I've seen them at the dollar store. Failing that, there's always online...

I was an assistant-manager at one for about a year when I turned 18. I had to work 48 hours a week (mandatory OT) and yes, some of the coolest swag found a way to my home in my own little 2008 CEO kinda way :)

Back in 1988 the pay was $8 so it wasn't all that bad for a 18 year old. I left though because the store had a lot of high-school students working for them and the drama was just too much to deal with... and knowing how irresponsible and full of drama I was back then, that says a lot about the rest!

Still, I'll never forget the two old Asian ladies that had a spit fight in one of the isles over one last toy...

But of course since the sale will be advertised like crazy the shoppers will bombard that tiny store.

Another trend I seem to see with liquidation sales held after the holidays is that people who hold yard sales in the summer almost always have SOMETHING from that liquidation sale. You can tell because they leave the price tags on the toys. I think I will wait to see what the summer holds.

The only thing KB seems to have a high stock of is overpriced chinese junk, piles and piles of no-name toys. Their brand name toys while those are china made as well I am sure, they have almost none of. The brand name toys are what kids want, if they want toys at all, all the kids in my family want video games and Ipods. Toys are dying out fast for any kid over 7 and Apple is getting all their money.

@Outrun1986:

This is because KB's target customers were desparate people who found out that item X was sold out everywhere else, were in too much of a hurry to compare prices, or were for whatever reason unwilling to return things.

I have 2 memories of KB:
1) After the video game market collapsed in '83, they had tons of game cartridges that they had to liquidate. I recall picking up some (then) cool games for Intellivision for 10 bucks, whereas 1 year earier, the games were $40 or so.
2) Dark Tower. Greatest Game EVER!

Of course, selling cheaply-made toys probably had more of an impact on their demise. If they'd carried quality stuff, the lack of video games wouldn't matter as much.

I got to play with toys everyday, got one heck of a workout during the holidays, and I got to see some smiles (a rare thing in retail).

May they Rest In Peace...

@El_Fez:
They entered bankruptcy back in 04 I think it was. They shut down a large number of stores, leaving whole states without any KBs, but they did not close down all together.

At the end of the 90's there were around a dozen KB stores in my general area, currently there are 4, and one was GOB next year even before this announcement.

It's sad, but it has been coming for years. The company's leadership never figured out what to do with the company once the economy started to tank at the start of the decade. They screamed "more customer service" while cutting hours, passed up on popular toys that people would actually buy for cheap junk with high profit margins that no one wanted, and somehow thought that everything would be okay.

Inept leadership + Wal Mart trying to run toy stores in general out of business + crappy economy = One dead KB Soldier.

I was just in KB two nights ago and they wanted more for a used copy of Halo 3 than Amazon wants for a brand new copy.

The only things we ever bought there were when a relative gave my daughter a Christmas gift that we returned for store credit.

Their prices really aren't competitive with anyone.

@ZenMasterKel: Yeah, I was hoping my viewpoint was objective, and not just a change in perspective with the passage of time. Kids really are at the leading edge of our overconsumption and "planned obsolescence" culture.

Now, what about GO-BOTS! And if you know about them from the reference in Clerks (was it the cartoon? one of the movies?), it doesn't count. :)

Not to be pedantic about it, but they're not going into Chapter 11 - they're likely going into Chapter 7. Under Chapter 11, the company reorganizes, sheds debt, restructures contracts, etc., and then reemerges. Under Chapter 7, the company liquidates: sell the inventory, sell the furniture, pay whatever you get for it to the creditors, and everybody goes home.

@The Name's Ash78, Housewares:
I recall the same fond experience. But KB hasn't been a decent toy store for more than 10 years, and it's not just because I'm older.

@zentex:

My question was always: if they're working overtime fighting crime, do they get time-and-a-half?

the "3/$5" bin + employee discount was my special shopping friend....

we once upon a time discovered overnight that The Tick toys were discontinued overnight and clearanced out. i freely admit to holding a few things back [they never were a big seller] when i was repricing them down to 17 cents apiece:

[www.flickr.com]

How many stores have you seen that follow this pattern? Fail, come back from bankruptcy, neglect to change, fail again.

@AtomicPlayboy: I'd say they're done with flirting and have moved on to "presenting."

I has a sad.

Didn't KB Toys already go bankrupt years ago? All the ones around here have long since closed.

Liars.

You sir, are a men among men for knowing what MASK was.

The KB's around here have stayed dirty for years. I never thought of it when shopping for toys. If we saw one in the mall, we would walk in, but very rarely buy anything. The front of the store was always cluttered with crap. I was in one just a few weeks ago that had Game Cube game on SALE for $40+. Not just Mario/Luigi stuff either.

Ho Ho Ho!

When I was a kid, most of the toys were part of a longstanding franchise: GI Joe, Barbie, He-Man, or even short-lived ones like MASK or Voltron. For years you could count on being able to drop in and find something you didn't have, and at a reasonable price--even on your small allowance.

But now the stores are 50% random Chinese crap, 50% short-term promotion crap (usually from some movie). And even if it is a Batman toy, they seem to re-release new series with each new movie, and the compatibility (by scale) is usually lost in the process.

When I was a kid, nothing got me into the toy store quicker than the prospect of a new GI Joe man for $2.79 (and my mom was cool with the low price). Or even a small vehicle for under $15. Now it seems like the figures themselves are $15, which makes parents less likely to give into the kids' whims on the spot. And when you don't offer whimsical and longstanding "franchised" toy choices, I don't see your business succeeding.

Most of the locations near me closed 4-5 years ago. Occasionally I could find something interesting in there, but it was definitely a shell of what it once was. Walk into a K-B 25 years ago, and they had an aisle of plastic model kits, model rockets, and model trains. On the other side of the store, video game cartridges. And of course, toys. The prices were rarely the lowest around, but they had a better selection and variety than anything outside of a big toy store like Toys R Us or Children's Palace, and they were in the mall. It was a great refuge on my mom and aunt's all-day shopping marathons when they would spend 2-3 hours each at JC Penney, Sears, and Montgomery Ward.

ok, I really like KB....cheap cheap clearance and since everyone always seemed to forget about it because of TOYS R US, you could usually score stuff there.

RIP KB...I just did a black friday, at midnight line thing this year. It was always my BF goto store!

@lalaland13: too true.

I feel like their products trailed off to target only sheltered kids that find barbie and cheap plastic swords entertaining.

KB Toys: Your Childhood Has Been Liquidated.

@lalaland13: Walmart has pretty much beaten down the mall toy store along with the local independent toy store for generic toy purchases. Any toy store surviving has high end toys or other lines helping it keep afloat.

I walked into a KB just a few days ago to relive some memories. I was shocked, everything was cheap garbage from China. There was nothing in that store I could see that I would have found interesting when I was a child.

No wonder kids only play video games now which KB didn't even carry.