Hello listeners. I have another special episode to share with you today. I'm sharing another

great podcast have just been made aware of. It's called The Closer from the team at Project

Brazen and hosted by financial journalist Amy Keen. The show focuses on pulling out the high

octane emotion and exponential stakes that underscore today's biggest acquisition or investment

headlights. In the episode I'm sharing today, the host takes you inside the final days of Toys

Are Us with Lauren Hirsch, the reporter who first revealed the iconic companies impending

bankruptcy. You can expect to hear juicy tidbits around what drove the company out of business.

Check out the closer and subscribe today on your favorite podcast catcher. And thanks again for

listening.

If you were a kid at any point in the last, let's say, 60 years or so, there's a decent chance you remember visiting a Toys R Us store.

I remember being pretty young myself and frankly, probably only a few feet high.

So going into Toys R Us felt more like entering this teeming toy palace

than it did a big box store. There were aisles upon aisles of toys. There were the easy

bake ovens, the cabbage patch dolls, and Barbie everything. It had to be a special occasion for my parents to bring me and my siblings there in the first place.

But we all knew this one thing.

The getting to go into the store usually meant that if we behaved, we just might walk out with something new.

Reporter Lauren Hirsch remembers something similar.

And I remember my mom at the end of the trip to the store saying,

I'm so proud of you, you didn't ask for one toy because I was always a very well-behaved kid.

So I just was kind of, you know, like kind of waiting for my mom to decide which toy she would give me.

But what I honestly remember the most are the ads.

I don't want to grow up, find a toys for us kid. The guy with a million toys and toys

...