Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture.

When Toys “R” Us closed the last of its 735 stores in the United States back in in 2018, it seemed destined to be a case study in how a seemingly indestructible brand dies: Once a big-box category killer, it was wracked with massive debt piled up by private equity buyers, and on the wrong side of a major shift toward e-commerce. Game over, it seemed.  

But remarkably, the brand has persisted after all—albeit in a revised, and decidedly more modest, form. The latest development, the company recently announced, is a combination of “new flagship stores,” and locations in airports and on cruise ships starting in 2024—a “retail expansion to air, land, and sea,” as the weirdly invasion-ish sounding official announcement put it.

Brand comebacks are never easy, and this attempt comes at an uncertain moment for in-person shopping. But some of the details make it worth paying attention to how it plays out.

One big-picture factor is nostalgia. Consider, for instance, the surprising cheer that has greeted the apparent comeback of Barnes & Noble—which, in its initial rise to bookselling dominance, had a mixed reputation at best. Many current parents have fond memories of classic-era Toys “R” Us stores and the aisles of toy abundance. Newer locations have been far smaller scale, but they still tap the appeal of in-person browsing over swipes and taps. (The fact that enduring toy classics from Barbie to Lego are holding their own in the digital era doesn’t hurt; the chain also pushes a variety of items connected to its familiar giraffe mascot, trying to place it among those iconic toys.)

But the specific details of Toys “R” Us’s strategy are intriguing, too. After some shifting ownership structures post-bankruptcy, the brand is now controlled by WHP Global, which owns a portfolio of brands from Anne Klein to Bonobos. While it opened a flashy, 20,000-square foot location at the much-ballyhooed American Dream Mall in New Jersey in 2021, it next rolled out mini-locations within 452 Macy’s stores in the U.S. (It also has international locations.) It’s now planning up to two dozen new “flagship” locations that would presumably have a bigger footprint more reminiscent of the chain’s heyday.

Then there are the travel-centric locations. The first location for the airport and cruise ship strategy is planned for the busy Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in November—just in time for impulse holiday shopping. This is the most notable of the new Toys “R” Us moves: It clearly aims to exploit the spend-y mood that vacationers often fall into. For some, travel is practically about shopping. Moreover, plenty of parent travelers might appreciate, or just succumb to, access to wares that will quiet the kids.

This is all quite distinct from the suburban stores that fueled the chain’s first rise over a period of decades. But nostalgia aside, shopping habits really have changed a lot since then—and physical retail is in an unpredictable moment. “Shopping in Person is Getting Worse,” The Wall Street Journal argued recently, citing lean staffing and anti-theft measures that make brick-and-mortar buying a drag. “Retail shopping is no fun anymore,” Axios agreed, adding self-checkout lines and fear of crime to the list. Vox simply declared that going shopping “is dead.”

As a reality check on all that, let’s remember that in real life the most recent retail spending numbers soared past expectations, and there is little indication that consumer spending will slow down soon. But it’s fair to say the revised Toys “R” Us will face some of the same challenges that did it in the last time, most notably e-tail alternatives. (Amazon has only become a more formidable competitor, even publishing an annual kids’ catalog.)

The brand, of course, has its own online store full of top-name toys (and its own holiday top toys list), but is clearly betting its future on a potent in-person experience. The nostalgia factor may turn out to be particularly effective at drawing in parents to check out the “new” Toys “R” Us, especially if it can be a child-friendly respite during a family trip. But the real test of this particular retail experience will be whether this version of being, well, a kid in a toy store is one that real-life kids want to repeat.