I Don't Want To Grow Up

Geoffrey the Giraffe, mascot of the late twentieth century retail behemoth Toys R Us, was dragged down a back alley near Wall Street in 2005 by Bain Capital,  KKR and Vornado Realty Trust and stripped of his solvency by a form of financial rape called a leveraged buyout. This form of vampire capitalism rose in the 1980’s where buyout bats buy a controlling portion of a company’s shares with borrowed funds using the company they are acquiring as the collateral and straddling it with the debt. 

Not all leveraged buyouts are hostile takeovers and some restructure and save brands that were falling behind the times as Toy R Us was to Walmart but often these “investors” act more like buzzards paying themselves huge salaries and fees while selling off assets, killing jobs, screwing smaller shareholders and leaving behind an empty shell. What Wolf Bain and its partners originally intended is outside our knowledge but many point to the two small wounds on the giraffe’s neck.

Satire1 takes to the corner of 14th Street and Oblivion in our nation’s capital where Toys R Us began in 1948 as Children’s Bargain Town to harvest the views of those of a tender age and the overcooked.

Gen Xer

“My parents took me to a store once. I can’t remember what kind of store it was. Maybe books but it had a cafe and people were looking at magazines instead of their phones. Creepy.”

Actress Xer

“Donald took me to FAO Schwartz across from the Plaza one Christmas when one of his wives was knocked up. I looked for the giraffe but a clerk told me Geoffrey worked at Times Square.”

Woman with big hat

“I only buy my children sex toys. They teach the kids self esteem and that growing up isn’t the end of the world. Even though it is.”

 Four year old girl with dolly

“Geoffrey and his herd were a stampede on local Mom and Pops from the fifties through the nineties but TRU also supported local small manufactures and were distribution centers for Toys for Tots and other charitable organizations. But have you ever smelled giraffe poop?”

Three year old boy in spacesuit

“Their website wasn’t customer friendly and when the deal with Amazon fell through they were up the Amazon without a paddle.”

Cop on the beat

“Giraffe poop smells like my dog Rocky’s when we feed him tacos.”

National Archives Beatnik

“Internet, cheaper, delivered, click. Or, a little girl stands in front of that gigantic stack of dollies staring blankly through the hard cellophane. Her adoring public. You can just click but you can’t give her the experience of going into the sea of dolls at Toys R Us and coming out with the special one she found herself.”

Ham Sandwich

“More money was spent on pads and phones for eight year olds than for toys last Christmas. The screens own them before they hit double digits.”   

Redskins fan

“I don’t want to grow up.”

Senator Rick Slick of West Dakota

“I don’t want to grow up.”

Mean Teen Queen

“Who grows up?”

Don Arrup

Satire1