Page 1 of Bye Bye Maplins and Toys r Us

Two more retailers fail on one day, Maplin and Toys R Us

Never been in a Toys R Us, but I'm going to miss Maplin. Where else do you get electronic hobby stuff and kit? Last year I needed a new transformer for a set of halogen lights. Straight to Maplin, job sorted in a couple of hours.

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Jitendar Canth

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"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

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Thanks for telling me.

I will now have to rush down to my local Maplin store before it closes to buy a spare Maplin 8 pin plug-in electrical relay that I use for my home heating controls, which I designed myself, just in case i find it difficult to get another.

Sad about Maplin - but haven't been there for ages. Another victim of Amazon Prime and I'm guilty of that.

Also sad about Toys R Us. Used to go there for kids prezzies but again, Amazon nicked all the business.

Farnell and CPC are so much cheaper for those quirky electrical things, obviously not the useful of going to a person behind a counter and showing him somehting and asking "have you got one of those please?"

Although last time I did that was when a microswitch broke in my Competition Pro joystick on my Amstrad! I guess that says it all :(

as for Toys R Us, my girls will miss the annual trip there to spend Christmas and birthday money :( I think there's still an Entertainer, or Rock Bottom toy store near me, although I wouldn't know as I try to avoid going to town centre.

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Toys R Us did it to themselves.
Stores unwelcoming and very similar to a warehouse.

Whenever I've been to a Maplins, which is probably half a dozen times in the last year or so I've not found a great deal of help past knowing which rack something might be on and it's often way cheaper online.
I've found more help on here, recently asking about ethernet cabling the house for example, and Youtube which seems to have tutorials on just about everything.

Snaps

There was something I wanted from Maplin, some fuses that only they did (for my multimeter that also came from Maplin many years ago), they wouldn't sell them mail order, in store only.

They wouldn't ship them to the store on the island. In the end I got them on the mainland when I was around. Probably not the reason they are going under, but not really helping themselves.

As admars says, CPC Farnell are the place to go these days.

I don't think either of those stores has changed with the times, the internet killed them.


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Toys R Us were hopelessly overpriced, so the market talks...

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Si Wooldridge
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when the US Toys R Us started to have troubles there was an interesting article, about why.

There was the obvious things like Amazon nearly always having stock of all video games, on all formats, cheaper.

but there was also things, like kids used to like going to shops to look at toys, pick up the box, but now there are "unboxing" videos on youtube, where in case you couldn't guess, you can watch a kid, unbox a toy, and play with it, so you can actually see what it's really like, how big it is etc, removing the "magic" of the toy shop. These youtube stars are apparently massive.

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