and they walk around for a few minutes with a distant look on their faces and then ask to leave, it is a shitty toy store.
I have no idea if they had a science kit in the back somewhere, or the microscope we got at Target on a top shelf somewhere (no doubt it would have cost at least double what we paid at Target) but the fact is, I have two young kids and on the couple of occasions we've gone there (once to spend a bundle of grandparent-given birthday money), both kids were, like *so meh*.
If you're a toy store and kids don't want to be there, you have a serious problem.
There are a couple of local independent toy stores, on the other hand, that they absolutely LOVE. You have to fight to get them to leave. We only shop these maybe a couple of times a year the prices are still high to me for what you get compared to online, BUT they have a very different selection of toys from brands that I don't remember on Saturday morning cartoons, not to mention very engaging displays, both of which the kids are fascinated by—it all generates that same "wow!" look that tells you the kids are fascinated. And I'd say that 35% of what the local independents stock isn't easily available online. From said local toy stores in the last year we bough a big dragon kite, a set of fairly difficult 3-D cast metal puzzles, a large bow and arrow set with foam-tipped arrows that actually has very real-life action and shoots arrows about 100 yards, a strategy game called Rubber Road that they really like, a Bloxels set, and a cool card game called Evolution that the kids are willing to play for hours and that actually does a reasonable job of illustrating the concept of natural selection in a very basic, reductive way (it's supposed to be for 12 and older, and it cost $40 ugh, but they love it anyway even though they're both under 10).
We never sighted stuff even remotely like this at our local Toys'R'Us stores. Instead, the board game aisle features about 50 variations on Monoply which of course we already have because there are eleventy billion sets already being passed down in families out there, a few ill-conceived highly branded board games that appear to be more about representing the characters to keep the kids interested in the TV property and drive ad revenue, plus a bunch of "gross out" games—plastic toilets that spray water in your face, random catapults that fling slime at the players (for which they're happy to sell extra slime on the side), etc. No strategy. Barely any rules. And the "toy" aisles are labeled with big signs: Disney. Marvel. Hasbro. Mattel. Crayola. etc. It's all organized by what appear to be brand-sponsorships, yet each aisle seems to have essentially the same stuff, just with different faces and costumes and paint jobs and packaging slapped on them. Bubble-packs of action figures hung on hooks. Below them, their "vehicles," "weapons," or "transport animals" in boxes. Supporting or minor characters toward either end of the aisle, major "characters" from the film/cartoon/etc. in the middle. All overcolored and overpriced and boring as sin.
To make matters worse, it's all $30-$50 for these cheap little hunks of plastic that really don't stimulate the imagination at all, or up to $hundreds for variations on the concept of "play house" (or castle or fortress or whatever) for said hunks of plastic. I mean, this stuff is just random brightly colored shit without much replay value or learning value, is not inspiring in the least, and would cost $3 at a Chinese import bric-a-brac store if not for the brand stamped on it and the overdone bubble packaging and loud labels IN ALL CAPS WITH EXCLAMATION MARKS! The Crayola aisle at least has creativity stuff, but the local Wal-Mart stocks the same crayon box sizes for $0.99 (for sixteen crayons) to $5.99 (for sixty-four) vs. starting at $3.49 for sixteen crayons. Who is going to pay $3.49 for a box of sixteen crayons? Or $7.99 for a 100-sheet sketch pad of not particularly high quality paper? WTF?! Particularly when the exact same items, the exact same brand, are a fraction of the price two parking lots away?
Not only that, but they don't have any of these things out on display for kids to actually touch. It's all bubble-packed or boxed, then hung up vertically in a such a way that 70% of inventory is above eye-level for a kid. The eyes just glazed over.
Seriously, if you take multiple kids under 10 years old into a dedicated toy store with massive square footage and a pile of money in the *kids' pockets* and then they drag you back out of the store 15 minutes later of their own accord asking to go to the Michael's next door instead—and as a parent, you're actually rather pleased with them for not wanting anything that any of you saw there—you have a serious problem with the way you're running a toy business.
Kids. Toys. What could be easier? AFAICT, it's no wonder Toys'R'Us is going out of business.