Toys R Us recently announced that it would be closing its doors for good before the end of the year, upsetting millions of kids and nostalgic adults. While the exact timeline of when Toys R Us will shutdown for good is unclear, the company has released that all 800 U.S. stores are going to be sold.

After filing for bankruptcy in September 2017, Toys R Us has struggled, restructuring the company by attempting to shut down hundreds of stores internationally and nationally and letting go of thousands of employees.

However, the timing of the declaration of bankruptcy did not work in favor of the company. It was the start of the holiday season, and many of the Toy R Us vendors became nervous about doing business with a toy company that was not in the best financial position.

As a result, the toy sales of Toys R Us went down dramatically in a company that was already struggling to make ends meet. Many of their competitors took advantage of their situation by making more aggressive marketing campaigns that Toys R Us couldn’t compete with. All of these factors added up to the toy company being put in a position where it could not easily see a way out.

Another reason for the close was that with the rise of online ordering from stores like Walmart and Amazon, potential Toys R Us customers opted to buy their toys online instead of making the trip to their local store. Many toy stores had been struggling in the battle of online ordering for years.

Toys R Us can be partly to blame for the decline of other companies that specialize in toy selling. Until the company announced it would be going out of business, Toys R Us was one of the last remaining physical chain toy stores still standing. Before its financial troubles, Toys R Us dominated the toy market, putting smaller toy stores out of business.

In addition to driving many stores out of business, Toys R Us also bought many failing companies. In 2009, the popular toy company, F.A.O. Schwarz sold all of its stores to Toys R Us, except for their original New York City location, which shut down until 2015. Toys R Us also bought KB Toys when that company shut down its business in 2009.

The fall of Toys R Us is a significant change in the modern day consumer’s world.

It marks the end of an era where stores that specialized in the selling of toys could be found nearly anywhere. It also opens the doors for online shopping to become even more of a powerful force in everyone’s lives as it becomes increasingly harder for stores to compete with online deals.

The shutting down of Toys R Us is not only just a final goodbye to millions of people’s favorite childhood store. It is also proof of the ever growing dominance of the world of online shopping.