The Last Aisle: How Toys "R" Us Canada Went From 81 Stores to About 20

The giraffe is still standing. It's the stores that are disappearing.

If you grew up anywhere near a Canadian suburb in the last forty years, you can probably still hum it: "I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid." You remember the Big Book catalogue at Christmas, the plastic aisle markers, and Geoffrey the Giraffe smiling down from the sign like he owned the parking lot.

So it stung when 2026 became the year Toys "R" Us Canada started vanishing. The downtown Toronto flagship at Yonge-Dundas Square quietly went dark at the end of May. British Columbia's last store closed with about three days' notice. And in February, the company behind Geoffrey filed for creditor protection with barely a fifth of its stores left.

Here's the full story — what happened, why it happened, and what it means for the kids who used to run down those aisles.

How we got here: a 40-year story with a brutal final chapter

1984 — Toys "R" Us crosses the border and opens in Canada, the same year a small Toronto shop called Mastermind Toys gets started. For decades, the giraffe rules Canadian toy retail: huge boxes, endless selection, birthday registries, the works.

2017–2018 — The U.S. parent company buckles under US$5 billion of leveraged-buyout debt and files for bankruptcy. All ~800 American stores close in June 2018. Canada survives — Fairfax Financial buys the Canadian operations, and for a while Geoffrey keeps grazing north of the border.

August 2021 — Canadian retailer Doug Putman (the music-business entrepreneur behind Sunrise Records) buys Toys "R" Us and Babies "R" Us Canada from Fairfax. The pitch: revive the brand. The chain has 81 stores at the time.

2024–2025 — The revival doesn't take. According to court filings, the company shut 53 stores across Canada in about two years. In the ten months ending November 2025 alone it lost roughly $170 million.

February 3, 2026 — Toys "R" Us Canada files for protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). The numbers are stark: about $160 million owed to unsecured creditors — $120 million of it to toy vendors, plus $26 million to service providers and millions in unpaid rent. Twenty-plus lawsuits from landlords and suppliers are already queued up. The same day, ToysRUs.ca goes dark. Online shopping: suspended.

June 2026 — An Ontario court approves splitting what's left among three buyers — including the current owner — dividing the brand, the store leases and the operating assets. Which specific stores survive? Still unclear.

Today — Roughly 20 stores remain out of the 81 that existed five years ago. No website. No e-commerce. A beloved brand running on life support inside a courtroom process.

Why did it happen?

It's tempting to blame Amazon and call it a day. The real story is a pile-up:

The math stopped working. A net loss of ~$170 million in ten months is not a rough patch; it's a business model failing. Big toy boxes carry huge rent, huge inventory, and thin margins.
Vendors lost faith. Toy makers ship on trust. When a retailer starts paying late, suppliers restrict shipments, the shelves thin out, shoppers notice, sales fall — and the spiral accelerates. That's exactly what court filings describe.
The shopping trip moved online. Amazon and Walmart can deliver a LEGO set to your door tomorrow, often cheaper than a mall-based big box. The "one trip, everything toys" errand has quietly become a checkout tap.
A rough economy for toys. Roughly 80% of the world's toys are made in China, and the 2025 tariff wave pushed toy and game prices up by a record amount. For a chain already drowning in vendor debt, costlier inventory is a knockout punch, not a body blow.

What it means for kids and parents

For parents, the practical loss is real: fewer stores, thinner shelves, no website for the holidays, and gift cards you'll want to spend sooner rather than later while locations remain open.

For kids, the loss is harder to put on a spreadsheet. A toy store is one of the few retail experiences built entirely around a child's imagination — the demo tables, theaisle-wide LEGO walls, the bike section you test-drove with training wheels. Walmart's toy aisle is an aisle. Amazon's storefront is a search bar. Neither hands your six-year-old ten minutes of pure, overwhelming want.

For a whole generation of Canadian parents, part of the ritual was walking your kid into the same store you begged your parents to take you to. That loop is closing store by store.

So who picks up the slack?

Nobody fully replaces a category killer, but each rival takes a slice:

Walmart & Target-style big box — Price and convenience win. Walmart has expanded toy selections every holiday since the original U.S. collapse in 2018. But it's toys-as-department, not toys-as-destination.
Amazon — Unbeatable selection on paper, zero magic in practice. Great when you know exactly which set you want; terrible for discovery.
LEGO brand stores (like the one in the Toronto Eaton Centre) — A genuinely great experience, but it's one brand's universe, not the whole toy world.
Mastermind Toys — The other Canadian chain, founded the same year as Toys "R" Us Canada, went through its own CCAA in 2023, closed 18 stores, and was rescued by Unity Acquisitions. Smaller, more curated, more educational — alive, but proof this whole category is under pressure.
Indigo and local independents — Curation and charm, often at boutique prices. They're having a moment precisely because the big box is gone.

The honest answer: the selection survives online, but the experience — the Saturday-afternoon pilgrimage — has no true substitute.

Have kids changed, or has the economy shrunk childhood?

Both, a little. But the toys aren't dead — the habits moved.

Global toy sales keep growing; kids haven't stopped wanting things to hold. What changed is what they want:

Collectibles exploded — up 32% in 2025, now nearly a fifth of all toy sales worldwide (hello, Pop Mart's Labubu craze).
Building sets keep winning — LEGO grew for a sixth straight year, up 18% in 2025.
Screens start earlier — tablets and video games compete for playtime at ages that used to belong to action figures. The "tween toy" customer is increasingly a gamer.

So the demand curve didn't collapse — it drifted to products that fit a screen-first childhood, and to shopping that fits a phone-first parent. Toys "R" Us Canada was built for a world of Saturday car trips and Sunday flyers. That world moved, and the company couldn't.

Is this the end of Geoffrey?

Ironically, no — just the end of an era. The brand is bouncing back in the U.S., where roughly 120 new standalone Toys "R" Us stores are opening in time for the 2026 holiday season. The giraffe has never stopped working; it's the Canadian store economics that gave out.

Which means the next chapter may be stranger than the last: a future where the toy megastore returns as a brand experience, while the actual shopping happens on your phone. Kids will still love toys. They'll just meet most of them through a screen first — and maybe, if a store near you survives the court process, get to run down an aisle anyway.

We don't want to grow up. Geoffrey never did either.

Sources: CBC News (June 2026 court approval of the three-buyer sale), Retail Insider (February & June 2026 CCAA coverage), Retail Dive, Global News, The Canadian Press via CityNews/PennLive, Toybook, Washington Post (May 2025 record toy-price jump), Circana/toy industry 2025 sales data, Wikipedia: Toys "R" Us Canada. Facts current as of September 2026.