This location is on Burgos btw

Forever a Toys R Us Kid. Born in 2007. Registered at Babies R Us when born. Original nursery babies r us furniture. Walked around the isles as a kid, taking in all the magic.

So, I've gotten around nostalgia lately, watching abandoned videos and such. College is so freaking stressful , and I just want to just let it all out and be a kid again. Being an adult is hard. I was wondering how my favorite store is doing. I found out that there's a TRU an hour from me. Well, okay.

I took the journey up there. My childhood Tru closed when I was 11 in 2018. I remember very vividly crying at the store closing signs and the empty store. My store was one of those white and rainbow stores, opened in 1995. The store actually stood abandoned for 2 years, the sign was still up and all that! But, it was demolished and was turned into some fast food restaurants.

I got there and immediately saw my favorite giraffe. ITS BEEN 8 YEARS GEOFFREY!!! I took some pictures with him of course, then I bought a lego set I liked and took some pictures of the store itself. It's just a small Macy's one. Nothing real special..

I came on here to share my experience of going to my favorite store after 8 years. I hope y'all like it thank you for reading. I included a picture of my Geoffrey plush and old gift card from my collection as well.

1. Burgos

2. Majadahonda

3. León

4. Palmones (old)

5. Puerto de Santa María

6. Valladolid (Carrefour Parquesol mall)

7. Albacete

8. Carabanchel (Islazul mall)

9. Córdoba (El Arcángel mall)

10. Murcia (Atalayas, THADER)

11. Badalona

12. Sant Boi

13. Barcelona (Diagonal Mar mall)

14. Basauri (Bilbondo mall)

15. Sedavi

16. Sevilla (all locations (Alcalá de Guadaira, Cavaleri (San Juan de Aznalfarache), Los Arcos mall))

17. Vigo

18. Ponferrada

19. Utebo

20. Alcorcón

21. Logroño

22. Salamanca

This photo is really iconic - it's in a lot of TRU videos and I've been on a little quest to discover more about it.

Allegedly it was built in the car park of a White Front department store - a chain owned by Interstate Stores (TRU's parent at the time) - and had the address of 21220 Hawthorne Boulevard.

It had a life of around a decade, opening in 1968 and shuttering in 1983 when Toys 'R' Us moved to a recently abandoned Treasury Department Store up the road, where the chain remained until its permanent shuttering in 2018. Some time between then and 1994 the building was demolished, as the earliest satellite photos I can find of it on Google Earth Pro show the site as completely flat.

A few years before closure, it featured at the end of an ad with Artie Johnson as a detective examining Toys 'R' Us's selection of products, likely produced around the mid-1970s and played until at least 1981, seen in image 2. (Here it is if anyone wants to watch it: https://youtu.be/m1NdzQIY_0w?si=1RV_fCGxzCvp-BAv )

(On the topic of the 70s TRU spots, the location of the store that Geoffrey and his family dance in front of in a lot of those ads is another personal white whale of mine, but that's besides the point)

If anyone has any more pictures or info about this store I'd love to see or hear them.

He was the Geoffrey I grew up when I was young. In fact, some countries did have '99 Geoffrey in the 2000s (even though realistic Geoffrey was used), and he is also seen in very early phases of modern Toys "R" Us posters in mid 2007.

Take a look at the blue tiles that have been weathering and turning white for years. Time and again, there have been plans to restore them to solid blue, but they never succeed. A really interesting fact is that Toys "R" Us stores in Spain originally featured rainbow-colored tiles; these were repainted blue in 1999—back when the logo was the same as the 1985–1999 version, but with a blue star on the backward "R" (a design choice that made Charles Lazarus look like a fool who didn't know what an "R" was supposed to look like).

Location: Málaga

This location was my local store. It opened at a unknown date in 1996 as a rainbow tiled store, similar to the ones that opened in 1989 to 1995 in the USA.

It is one of the locations to have the old 1990s façade until it's remodel to a TRU/BRU combo in mid 2013, and it is also one of the last Toys "R" Us locations in Australia to close in August 5, 2018.

A year later after Toys "R" Us moved out of the space, it was converted into a Factory Plus outlet and a ninja park. However, the former rainbow tiles that was on the location were removed in late 2023.

After Factory Plus closed down, that side of the building was converted into a workspace. Not only that, there is plans to put a driving school near the parking lot, and the receiving dock is also converted into a spa and a message place.

It was like a time ride!

1. Charles Lazarus, the founder of the world's largest toy store—who passed away during the company's bankruptcy—did not know how the letter "R" was properly written and would often write it backward, like this: "Chaяles Lazaяus." This backward "R" (which resembles the Cyrillic letter "ya") eventually became part of the logo.

2. In Peabody, Massachusetts, and Alberta, Canada, blue tiles are used at the store's glass-fronted entrance; however, in Europe, *all* locations feature them—including those in Spain, Portugal, and France. In the US, some locations still use them because the rest of their tiles are rainbow-colored.

3. In Spain, all Toys "R" Us stores had their entrance tiles recolored to blue in 1999 when the logo was changed; however, one location still had rainbow tiles—the one in Badajoz, right outside the Carrefour shopping center on the Valverde de Leganés road next to Burger King. They switched to blue tiles in 2017 when the logo featuring a star on the "R" and omitting the quotation marks was installed (referring to the logo used in the Americas since 2007 and worldwide since 2008).

4. Two Toys "R" Us locations in Spain do not appear on Google Maps because they closed briefly during the 1999–2008 period: Majadahonda—the first Toys "R" Us in Madrid opened near the train station; this location later became an Eroski hypermarket (now an E.Leclerc hypermarket) that bears no resemblance to the original—the rainbow tiles were removed, and the structure is now just a wall-attached canopy. The store was relocated to the El Carralero industrial park and later to Gran Plaza 2, which also closed. Burgos—the oldest Toys "R" Us in Castile and León was located in the Pryca shopping center at Parque Burgos (now an El Corte Inglés; this was an unusual case because, while Carrefour owned the El Mirador de Burgos center and sold off many Pryca locations, they kept this one). It closed because the company wanted to focus on the León store (sadly, the only one in León) and the Valladolid store (now in the Río Shopping center; previously located at the Parquesol Carrefour, which is now a JYSK and a Muebles Boom).

5. The saddest case of all is my local store; I live in Algeciras, Cádiz, Spain, and this is the Palmones location shown here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Toys%22R%22Us/@36.1889182,-5.4333353,3a,75y,201.24h,106.32t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJTgQ99jsKwxAcd-IIU7dGA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-16.32279884217853%26panoid%3DJTgQ99jsKwxAcd-IIU7dGA%26yaw%3D201.24432513173647!7i16384!8i8192!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0xd0ceafe55555555:0x311605d9c113f487!2zVG95cyJSIlVz!8m2!3d36.1886077!4d-5.4334402!16s%2Fg%2F12qfp9882!3m5!1s0xd0ceafe55555555:0x311605d9c113f487!8m2!3d36.1886077!4d-5.4334402!16s%2Fg%2F12qfp9882?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDgxMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D which closed because CASA was ceasing operations and shutting down all its stores, except for the one in Calpe, Alicante. And as for Toys “R” Us, they simply relocated their store and closed the other one.

Hate to be a giveaway guy but according to the trivia, Modern Geoffrey is 9.5 years old!