KB Toys
American chain of toy stores
KB Toys (stylized K·B Toys; Kay Bee Toys prior to 1981) was an American chain of mall-based retail toy stores. The company was founded in 1922 as Kaufman Brothers, a wholesale candy store. The company opened a wholesale toy store in 1946 and ended its candy wholesaling two years later to emphasize its toy products. Retail sales began during the 1970s, using the name Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby.
In 1999, the company operated 1,324 stores across the United States and was the second-largest toy retailer in the U.S., but it began to struggle in the early 21st century, declaring bankruptcy in both 2004 and 2008 before going out of business on February 9, 2009. The company operated 461 stores at the time of its closure.
International retailer Toys "R" Us acquired the remains of KB Toys, consisting mainly of its website, trademarks, and intellectual property rights. Strategic Marks, a company that buys and revives defunct brands, purchased the brand in 2016, and planned to open new stores using the name beginning in 2019; plans for this revival, however, were cancelled due to a lack of funding.
History
Brothers Harry and Joseph Kaufman originally opened a wholesale candy store, Kaufman Brothers, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on April 1, 1922. During the 1940s, the brothers acquired a wholesale toy company from a candy client who owed them money for outstanding debts.
“KB Toys” enters the record as american chain of toy stores. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Toys, American and chain can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6326502. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1922, 1946 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “KB Toys” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.