As part of a fire sale to repay its debt, beloved and bankrupt toy store Toys “R” Us is offering up its intellectual property—which not only includes its name and trademarked mascot, but also all the inactive domain names it bought up to avoid potential embarrassment.
That’s right: kinkytoysrus.com and its frisky partner, sex-toys-r-us.com, are on the market.
Toys “R” Us, headquartered in my home state of New Jersey, was saddled with enormous debt after a leveraged buyout in 2005 (a precarious financial situation our own parent company, Univision, would trip ass-first into two years later.) After struggling against poor odds for well over a decade, the chain of 700+ stores announced a total liquidation in March. Charles Lazarus, the company’s founder, died less than a week later at 94, having watched his life’s work sold off for scrap.
While it’s natural to mourn the loss of an institution like Toys “R” Us to the whims of vulture capitalists, there’s a chance to own a small piece of that magic by purchasing one of the dozens of domain names registered by the disappearing toy store. According to Reuters, those names include ihatetoysrus.com, toysrussucks.com, and countless variations on [noun]s-r-us.com.
If there are any enterprising sex toy companies out there who can’t afford the intellectual property Lazarus’s ruined empire has up for auction, this particular blogger is the proud owner of dildos-r-us.com, and he’s willing to part with it for a fair price.
[Reuters]