STEPHEN L. CARTER: Farewell to Toys ‘R’ Us, and an Era of Play.

For a while, Toys ‘R’ Us prospered. Still, the handwriting was on the wall. The chain continued to dominate the toy industry for another decade and a half, but then began to slip. In 1990, 25 percent of all toys sold in the U.S. were purchased at Toys ‘R’ Us. A decade later, as the figure slipped well below 20 percent, Walmart Inc. surged ahead. The stores themselves were aging, and the company took a $495 million charge against earnings to spruce them up. 2 Worried about the rise of EToys (does anyone remember EToys?) and American Girl (sold at the time exclusively through the mail), Toys ‘R’ Us moved expensively and not very successfully into online and direct marketing. Meanwhile, high-volume, low-margin retailers like Walmart and Kmart were discounting toys to get consumers into the stores, then offering them a full-service experience that Toys ‘R’ Us couldn’t match.

In 2006, the chain was taken private, but the new owners were never able to reinvigorate its sales, or, for that matter, to get it out from under $5 billion in debt. In September, the company entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and now, after a disastrous holiday season, the owners are giving up. Seeking a cause for its demise, Toys ‘R’ Us has cast the blame upon its competitors — particularly Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart — which is a little like saying I’d have won the golf tournament if not for all those guys with the lower scores.

But the chain’s biggest foe was neither nimbler retailers nor that heavy debt load. It was the undermining of the very concept of the toy. . . .

Well, toys that talk and blink a chain could still stock, albeit at a fearsome discount to compete with online retailers. But when a toy as a tangible thing to be manipulated yielded to a toy as a digital presence with which a child interacted via a multipurpose device, the idea of a toy store was in its death throes. As we learned from the demise of video and record chains, that which is downloadable needs no physical presence to be sold. And nowadays even very young children prefer the touchable screen to the touchable toy. Apart from a niche here and there, toy stores no longer serve any discernible function.

Sad.