Stores Faring Well In Bad Economy

Despite the recession, some store chains are reporting a better second quarter compared to last year’s second quarter for different reasons. Dollar General has been doing very well so far this year with an increase in sales by over 8 percent in the second quarter and over 11% for the year. There are plenty of useful items you can get cheaper there and it seems people are spending more time at discount stores to save money. Toys R Us has also announced an increase in profit, even with a loss of total sales compared to last year,  just by streamlining margins and cost control. They have been able to turn a profit while the economy is down, showing they can handle the downturn. Increasing sales doesn’t always increase profit, sometimes you can increase profit just by lowering expenses and cutting costs. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues when the economy gets better or if people will fall back into the bad habits of overspending and not saving for a rainy day. I’ve always tried to get sales or the lesser price anywhere I could to save money. Why pay more for the exact same thing somewhere else? Have you started shopping at discount stores to save...

Local Buck Or Two Store Closed

I was running an errand down at the plaza where the Buck or Two, or one of the Buck or Twos in the city in case there’s more than one, is located so I decided to stop in to see if they had anything new and/or interesting and to my surprise, the store was closed down, completely closed! The store was completely cleaned out already and there was no sign or indication that the store was being move to another location. There were just several “Store Closed” signs on the inside of the windows. It’s kind of a surprise after reading several articles about how dollar store profits are up during the current recession. Well what can you do, some locations just don’t work for certain things and it’s not like there aren’t any Buck or Twos around anywhere else. Some of the toys I got at that particular store include the Bricks Set Sets(tough to say), Fighter Robots, Skateboard Racers, Pirate Figures and the Wildlife Collection Sea Creatures in addition to other toys I have yet to post. It’s kind of the same thing as when the Food Basics dollar section got cleared out. I got a bunch of good things from there including the 11 inch army guy, Labyrinth Game Challenger and, toy that started it all, the plastic bowling set. All good things must come to an...

100th DSTB Post

This is it, the 100th post for Dollar Store Toy Box. I thought I would have hit that mark a long time ago, but this is only a side project. Regardless, I finally made it. It’s kind of cheesy to announce a milestone posting on a website, I mean it’s not like a TV show lasting 100 episodes without being cancelled, but you only hit the 100 post count once per website under normal operation. Besides, how is this post any cheesier than the toys? Looking Back The site was originally going to be about the silly toys you get at the dollar stores. Unfortunately, it was shortly after setting up this website that many toys were starting to get recalled. I started posting some toy recall information and other toy news of note that caught my eye, like the toys being made into movies announcements. For a laugh, this is what the site used to look like. I figured it would fit the quality of the toys and such, a dollar design as it were. Then I got frustrated because I couldn’t get the side bars to work right so I found the current design. All of the toys are cheaply made to keep them at their low price and many of the toys are bootleg, knock off or rip offs of popular toys to capitalize on the success of the toys they’re copying. It’s funny to see what cheap bootlegs you can find at the dollar and discount stores. Moving Forward New Look I’m looking into changing this design to something else if I can sort out what I want, so don’t get confused if the look changes. I just want to get something that helps people find stuff easier. A design with two or more sidebars should help with that. Toy Videos It’s tough to really get an idea on how something works just by reading what I say, even with pictures. I have a few toy videos up on how some of the toys work so far, but they are mostly toys with sounds instead of uploading sound files to listen to individually. I plan on putting up more videos of the toys in action and some original videos. Flash Games Hopefully you’ve tried out the Labyrinth Flash Game Challenger, based on the Labyrinth Game Challenger. It truly captures the frustration of playing with the real thing. Unfortunately, it’s the only game I’ve made so far, but I’m hoping to add more to that list....

Toy BlackBerry And Cellphone Videos

I finally got around to taking some video clips of the gadget toys. It’s hard to just talk about the cellphones and the BlackBerry when the sounds are a large part of the toy. With the Spiderman cellphone, I posted the individual sounds that came with the toy, but people had to click on five different links to hear each sound. With the Batman cellphone, they were for the most part unremarkable except for one silly one I posted in the review and the BlackBerry sounds were all average so I didn’t even post any sounds clips in the review for it. Now that I have the means to make videos of the toys, you can be sure I’m going to be posting many more videos, informative and...

Should Fast Food Toys Be Banned

It was always a treat when you were taken out to a fast food place by your parents. You would get the kids meal and sometimes they would come with the toy. You got the adventure of eating out and souvenir to take home with you. Sometimes they would have a set of toys to collect and it would be frustrating when you would go with a couple siblings and you all ended up with the same toy instead of different ones. I remember when they had Gobots as a toy one time and we all got Leader 1. A prosecutor from Brazil wants to have toys included in kids meals, dollar store toys younger sibling, banned since they are obvious marketing ploy by the fast food chains to bring in customers. On the surface it sounds like someone just trying to ruin things for kids, but really, it’s someone thinking of the children. The argument is that fast food is part of the obesity problem, since the food has little to no nutritional value, and kids want the toys included in those meals. That makes for a pretty good argument to have that stopped. I think one of the big chains had Transformer toys included when it came out and one big chain will most likely include a toy related to the new Transformers 2 and GIJoe movies coming out soon. Although a sound argument, it might not pass since it will open the door to other products with toy inclusions that offer no nutritional value, for example cereal. Cereal is one of the most well-known products that will have toys included to boost sales, but while the occasional box of Corn Flakes might have a toy, so will Fruit Loops and other various cereals with high sugar content. One could make the same argument with that and perhaps Kinder Surprise, the chocolate egg with a toy inside. You won’t be able to get a toy inside anything that isn’t jammed into a vegetable by the time they are done! If toys are banned from fast food, other products with toys will most likely follow, but I don’t see that happening. If it does, the prosecutor is in Brazil and it will probably only affect kids in Brazil. Do you think toys should be banned from kid’s meals at fast food restaurants or is that just another scapegoat in the fight against...