It is more expensive, but I'd counter that I have a lot more disposable income these days too.  Beyond increasing wages, I'm buying a lot less toys with each passing year.  Comics take up very little space as well, so neither of those are big factors for me.  I just don't like what they're doing with the characters and stories.  The continuity is all shot to hell at Marvel (and DC from what I hear), and there's too much emphasis on "look at the big spread picture we drew" versus " think about the interesting twists and relationships in the stories we're building."  When I look back on some of favorite comics, it wasn't the art that blew me away, it was the story.  Stark losing everything due to alcoholism, Pym's insecurities causing the birth of Ultron and getting him kicked off the team, Hawkeye & Cap's debates about what's best for the team, the weird love triangle with Scarlet Witch, Wonderman, and Vision.  I even really liked Rhodey taking over the Iron Man armor (gasp a Black Iron Man!), but now that's all they can come up with.  Loki's reborn as a woman, then as a kid.  Iron Man goes on a crusade to prevent anyone from using his tech...except a black college girl.  Cap was a secret agent for Hydra all these years.  Thor's a chick.  Wolverine's a chick.  Hawkeye's a chick.   It's so utterly disappointing when they could be doing so much more. 

They did indeed file for Bankruptcy yesterday right here in my hometown of Richmond, VA. 

Long, slow death spiral sounds about right to me. I have been reading a lot of articles on this lately and there just does not seem to be any clear path to restoring financial stability.

It would be heard enough to sustain their business in the current retail climate to begin with, much less saddled with 7+ BILLION dollars of debt that they didn't even incur - thanks to vultures like Bain Capital. Good luck digging out of that hole.

I would be sad to see them go, so many great childhood memories, and a few adult ones too. But given the choice I would never shop there because its such a horrible experience. Everything is overpriced, their "sales" are terrible, they refuse to offer decent clearance prices, there's always a huge line with 1 person working checkout, etc etc. At least Walmart and Target have self check-out.

Hurry up and get those Ackbar and Rey exclusives out!

This could last years and lead to TRU coming out just fine. Or, a long, slow death spiral like K-Mart. Too soon to tell, but retail in general is suffering and I think the more dedicated you are to a specific niche, the more vulnerable you are to cannibalization by Amazon.

There are a lot of toy brands that don't sell out anymore. Why do they keep it around and not put them on clearance? I'm looking at you TFA and Rogue One. Why do they raise the price and then put it back to normal and call it on clearance?

Some people are like good riddance, but really...this is it, the last major non-specialty toy retailer in North America.

But the flip side, some people will be forced to grow up and no longer be Toys R Us kids.