Toys R Us Adds 120 Holiday Stores Without a Permanence Pledge

Toys R Us will open 120 standalone stores across the United States for the 2026 holiday season, taking its standalone U.S. count to 160. The brand said so on Sept. 17 with Go! Retail Group, the Austin operator that already runs its American shops. WHP Global, the licensing firm that bought control in March 2021, still owns the name.

The release lists no cities, no opening dates, and no store sizes, and it does not say the new doors will remain after the gifts are opened.

A Holiday Fleet Without a Store Map

The math in the announcement is simple. Toys R Us already counts 40 standalone U.S. stores. Add 120 and the holiday fleet is 160, four times the current standalone base, still a sliver of the chain that vanished in 2018 under $5 billion of debt.

Jamie Uitdenhowen, executive vice president of Toys R Us at WHP Global, framed the push as a way to meet shoppers in several formats at once, including hometown stores, Macy’s shops, airports, and Navy Exchanges.

This is a major moment for Toys R Us as we significantly expand our presence across the United States.

Jamie Uitdenhowen, Executive Vice President of Toys R Us at WHP Global

The company said the new shops will carry a curated mix of toys, collectibles, and gifts, including LEGO, Barbie, Hot Wheels, Pokémon, and KPop Demon Hunters. A spokesperson said the new boxes run about 3,500 to 7,500 square feet, mall and outlet scale, not the old warehouse floors. Shoppers who have already walked the current pop-ups describe rooms the size of a typical mall store, busy enough that kids still disappear down an aisle.

Select sites will add candy shops, cafés, and Creator Studios for influencers and toy companies. The brand pointed people to a 120 standalone stores opening this holiday season plan and a store finder, not a city list.

55% of Toy Sales Come From Adult Homes

The timing sits on a toy market that is no longer a children’s-only business. Circana, the research firm that tracks the category, said U.S. toy dollar sales rose 17% from January through June 2026, the strongest first-half performance in six years. Unit sales rose 12%, and the average selling price rose 4%, led by trading cards, collectibles, licensed goods, and fandom-driven play.

THE U.S. TOY BOOM, FIRST HALF OF 2026

• Dollar sales: Up 17% from January through June, per Circana.
• Adult-only homes: 55% of toy sales, and those households grew 16%.
• Adult recipients: Toy sales for people 18 and older grew 25%, the largest slice of the gain.
• Teens: Sales for ages 12 to 17 jumped 33%, the fastest recipient group.

Teens and adults together produced nearly 60% of the extra dollars in the first half. Licensed toys rose 24% and made up 39% of sales. Games and puzzles rose 45%, explorative toys 58%, and building sets 22%.

Kristen McLean, vice president of client insights for Circana’s Entertainment Knowledge Group, said the trade is heading into the holidays with strong momentum, while price and affordability still need watching. Uitdenhowen has used the trade word kidults for grown shoppers who never left cards, figures, and bricks. That is the customer a 5,000-square-foot mall shop can serve without rebuilding a 1990s superstore.

The Austin Company That Runs the Stores

WHP Global is a brand manager, not a store clerk. The person stocking Geoffrey’s aisle is Go! Retail Group, a family-owned Austin firm that has treated Toys R Us as one name in a larger pop-up kit since the 2023 partnership WHP once billed as air, land, and sea.

Go! describes itself as one of the world’s largest fleets of pop-up stores and the largest calendar publisher in the world, with work in six countries since 1993, year-round shops, e-commerce, 3PL, and 380,000 square feet of warehouse space. Marc Winkelman, Gideon Schlessinger, and Paul Hoffman lead it. The firm’s own site also lists a Disney Store limited-time line beside Calendars.com, Babies R Us, Go! Toys and Games, and Snoozimals.

WHAT GO! RETAIL GROUP BRINGS TO THE GIRAFFE

• The job: It operates U.S. Toys R Us stores and, on its services page, says it has handled end-to-end shop management for the Macy’s partnership.
• The muscle: Pop-up speed, mall leases, and a warehouse network built for seasonal bursts, not a 700-store private chain.
• The web split: Go! says its U.S. stores focus on the in-person visit, while toysrus.com runs under a separate partnership.
• The other brands: Calendars, plush, and limited-time Disney shops sit in the same family as the giraffe.

Schlessinger said 160 stores give the brand a chance to reach millions of customers and to build destinations people will want all year. That is an operator’s hope, not a lease filing. Go! already advertises flagship stores and holiday shops nationwide, and a smaller version of this holiday surge ran in 2025.

Paramus and Houston Closed in January 2021

American shoppers have been told Toys R Us was back before. Tru Kids Brands, which held the intellectual property after liquidation, opened smaller experiential stores at Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, and The Galleria in Houston in November 2019. Each was about 6,500 square feet, with unwrapped toys and Geoffrey on the floor.

HOW THE NAME RETURNED TO U.S. FLOORS

1. 2017: Toys R Us files Chapter 11 after years of falling sales, carrying $5 billion in debt.
2. 2018: Remaining U.S. stores close. Tru Kids later holds the brands, including Geoffrey the Giraffe.
3. November 2019: Two comeback stores open in Paramus and Houston, far smaller than the old boxes.
4. January 15, 2021: The Houston Galleria store closes.
5. January 26, 2021: The Paramus store closes. Tru Kids cites COVID traffic and says it will pivot to busier sites and platforms.
6. March 2021: WHP Global buys a controlling stake in Tru Kids.
7. Mid-December 2021: A 20,000-square-foot, two-level flagship opens at American Dream in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
8. 2022: Hundreds of Toys R Us shops open inside Macy’s. Macy’s said first-quarter toy sales were 15 times higher than in the comparable period before the tie-up.
9. 2023: WHP partners with Go! Retail Group on more U.S. flagships, including travel retail that later added Dallas Fort Worth.
10. August 2026: A shop-in-shop opens at Orlando International Airport with WHSmith North America; a second is set for summer 2027.
11. September 17, 2026: The brand announces 120 new standalone stores for the holiday season.

The 2019 pair did not survive a winter of empty malls. The 2026 fleet is larger, cheaper to plant, and easier to unwind, which is the point of hiring a pop-up company.

Five Stores Get Creator Studios First

The new pitch is not aisle length. It is time spent in the box. Uitdenhowen said shoppers have been asking for standalone stores with a fuller mix and more to do, and that Creator Studios grew from watching how people already use the shops. He credited chief marketing officer Kim Miller with the idea.

Five existing stores are the test bed later in September: American Dream in New Jersey, Mall of America in Minnesota, Camarillo Premium Outlets in California, Denver Premium Outlets in Colorado, and Chicago Premium Outlets in Illinois. The brand wants a recipe before it copies the rooms into more doors. Candy shops and cafés are the other lure, a way to turn a 5,000-square-foot lease into an outing.

Those five names already show up on the live map. An official Toys R Us Play Day in July also listed Arundel Mills in Maryland, Harlem Irving Plaza in Illinois, Tanger Deer Park in New York, Westroads Mall in Nebraska, Jordan Creek in Iowa, Tanger San Marcos in Texas, and Towne East Square in Kansas. San Marcos is the store the company used as the picture for the 120-store release. Nostalgia still does launch-day work. The register has to convert collectors who now treat cards and bricks as hobbies, which is why the assortment leans into Pokémon and movie property as hard as it leans into Geoffrey.

Will the 120 Doors Stay After Christmas?

The company would like the answer to be yes. Uitdenhowen said some earlier shops that the partners treated as holiday-only did well enough that they extended the lease, and that many of this new batch are expected to remain after the season. Schlessinger talked about destinations people revisit through the year. That is not a roster of 120 long-term leases.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The count: 40 standalone U.S. stores now, 120 more planned, 160 by the holidays if the openings land.
• The operator: Go! Retail Group runs the standalone shops; WHP Global owns the brand.
• The other net: About 400 Toys R Us shops inside Macy’s, plus airports and Navy Exchange shop-in-shops.
• The test rooms: Creator Studios start in five named stores in September 2026.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The map: No full list of the 120 sites, opening dates, or sizes in the Sept. 17 release.
• The leases: No public pledge that every new door stays into 2027.
• The mix: How many of the 120 are true flagships versus seasonal mall shops is not broken out.

That blank is the story under the giraffe. A mall landlord can host a holiday toy shop for 90 days. A reconstructed national chain cannot appear in 120 cities in one season without that flexibility. Parents already know the current rooms are not the old caverns, and they still bring kids. The bet is that a licensed name, a short lease, and a collectible assortment can print holiday sales without taking back the real estate that sank the last company.

Macy’s, Airports and the Navy Already Carry the Name

Even if every new standalone store vanished in January, Toys R Us would still exist in other people’s buildings. That is the model WHP has been assembling since 2021, and it is why a 120-store headline can move faster than a chain rebuild.

WHERE TOYS R US SHOWS UP IN THE UNITED STATES

Globally the brand still says it does more than $2 billion a year through more than 1,680 stores and e-commerce in 37 countries. WHP lists 16-plus consumer brands and more than $9.5 billion in retail sales. Those figures are licensing math. They do not put a 40,000-square-foot Toys R Us back on a highway exit.

Shoppers who want a door, not a press release, are being sent to the Toys R Us store locator as locations go live. The 2026 holidays will show whether 160 standalone shops can feel like a chain. January 2027 will show how many of the 120 were a season and how many were a store.