How a Pittsfield candy wholesaler became a mall toy chain
Harry and Joseph Kaufman opened Kaufman Brothers, a wholesale candy business in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on April 1, 1922. Sugar shortages during World War II made candy expensive to produce, and the brothers took a wholesale toy company off a customer who owed them money.
They opened a wholesale toy store on Columbus Avenue in Pittsfield in September 1946, and by 1948 they were out of the candy business entirely. The retail chain came much later. In 1973 the company dropped wholesaling and put everything behind its 26 retail stores, trading as Kay-Bee Toy and Hobby. The name was just the brothers' initials.
Growth followed the enclosed mall. The stores were small, bright and stacked to the ceiling, wedged between a shoe shop and the food court, and they worked because that was where American families spent Saturday afternoon. By 1999 the chain ran 1,324 stores and was the second largest toy retailer in the United States behind Toys R Us, and the largest mall-based one.
Why a mall toy store could not beat the discounters
The trouble was that the same box of toys sold for less somewhere else. Walmart and Target used toys to pull families through the door and priced them to do it, and a small mall shop paying mall rent could not answer that on a boxed action figure.
So KB Toys multiplied formats instead: KB Toy Works in strip centers, KB Toy Outlet in outlet malls, and short-term KB Toys Holiday stores that opened for Christmas and vanished in January.
The squeeze showed in the store count. On November 8, 2007 the chain closed 156 stores in a single move, leaving 1,144. Those four formats were still the whole company in its last week.
What pushed KB Toys into Chapter 11 twice?
Consolidated Stores, the parent of Big Lots, closed the sale of its KB Toy division to an affiliate of Bain Capital on December 7, 2000. Its SEC filing put gross proceeds at roughly $305 million, made up of about $258 million in cash, a note with a face amount of $45 million, and a warrant. KB Toys management bought in alongside Bain Capital and stayed on to run the chain.
In April 2002 the toy company borrowed to pay its owners an $85 million dividend, financed in part with $66 million in bank loans. Creditors later argued the payout left KB Toys insolvent and contributed to a $109 million loss before the bankruptcy. Bain Capital's position was that the company was healthy when the dividend was paid and that the later trouble was unrelated.
The first bankruptcy came in January 2004, weeks after the parent of FAO Schwarz filed its own. KB Toys closed hundreds of stores, left Chapter 11 in August 2005 under Prentice Capital Management, and went into the 2008 holiday season smaller and still carrying debt.
It filed again on December 11, 2008, in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, two weeks before Christmas. Sales at stores open at least a year had fallen nearly 20 percent between October 5 and December 8, the stretch that was supposed to carry the year, and the filing blamed a "sudden and sharp decline in consumer sales."
Who bought the KB Toys name after the liquidation?
The second filing became a wind-down almost at once, with going-out-of-business sales opening across the chain within days. At the filing the Pittsfield company listed 277 mall stores, 114 outlets, 40 KB Toy Works and 30 seasonal holiday stores, 461 in all. Published tallies of what finally closed differ: FreightWaves counted 431, and several accounts put it at 460. The liquidation reached about 10,850 employees, roughly 6,500 of them seasonal hires.
The last stores closed on February 9, 2009, the same day the company's website went dark.
The trademarks outlived the leases. A bankruptcy auction sold the KB Toys intellectual property to CE Stores, a unit of Toys R Us, for $2.1 million, approved by the court on September 2, 2009. The package ran to 15 registered trademarks, including KB Toys and Toy Works, and more than 65 web addresses including kbtoys.com. The name ended up with the competitor that had outlasted it, grouped by the trade press with Sharper Image and Linens 'n Things as brands that kept trading as intellectual property after the stores were gone.
What happened to the 1,000 pop-up stores promised in 2018?
Toys R Us never rebuilt KB Toys as a chain and let the registration go unused. Strategic Marks, a California company that buys and revives dead American brands, filed for the KB Toys trademark on March 2, 2016.
In March 2018 Toys R Us announced that it would liquidate its American stores, and within days Strategic Marks founder Ellia Kassoff said KB Toys would move into the gap. "I think we could build the concept out pretty quick, with help from the toy industry and manufacturers," Kassoff told The Boston Globe in March 2018. The plan was as many as 1,000 temporary stores open for Black Friday, with the best performers converted into permanent leases.
Not one of them opened. The target slipped to 2019 and shrank to 200 or 250 proposed locations before it stopped. Kassoff told Licensing International in 2019 that "the toy companies had lots of conflicts of interest that prevented them from investing in KB given that they sell to other retailers," and that mall operators do not typically invest in prospective tenants.
That 2016 trademark application was recorded as abandoned in March 2020 for want of a statement of use. The 2018 headlines are still indexed, which is why Americans keep searching to find out whether the stores ever opened.
Who owns the KB Toys name today?
No KB Toys store exists in any American mall, strip center or outlet, and none has since February 2009. What exists instead is a licensing program.
Firefly Brand Management announced in November 2024 that it had signed a master toy deal, effective that July, with MH Enterprises, acting on behalf of KB Toys and its owner, Strategic Marks. The agreement covers toys, apparel, decor, enamel goods, paper goods, drinkware, comic books, live convention events and a Substack newsletter.
MH Enterprises is run by Marc and Marianna Heon, who met while working at KB Toys more than 25 years ago. "This brand has always held a special place in our hearts," the couple said in the 2024 announcement carried by License Global.
In 2026 the brand marked 80 years since the Kaufmans opened their toy business, and it marked them at a convention rather than a lease. Icon Heroes turned booth 4344 at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 into a KB Toys space, selling an 80th Anniversary Gold Toy Soldier bobblehead, an eight-inch limited edition, alongside $10 enamel pins of the toy soldier mascot and of the chain's old "3 for $10" sticker.
Where to find one today
Old KB Toys material is cheap and plentiful: store shopping bags, price stickers, shelf signage and employee shirts, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s. Vintage listings sit in the low tens of dollars, well under what the new licensed collectibles cost. Etsy's vintage KB Toys listings are the practical place to browse them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is KB Toys coming back?
Not as a store chain. KB Toys has been a licensed brand since Strategic Marks filed for the trademark in 2016, and the 2018 plan for up to 1,000 pop-up stores never opened because the funding did not come together. As of 2026 KB Toys sells collectibles online and appears at conventions, with no announced retail locations.
When did KB Toys close?
KB Toys filed for Chapter 11 on December 11, 2008, and its last stores closed on February 9, 2009. The company listed 461 locations at the filing: 277 in enclosed malls, 114 outlets, 40 KB Toy Works and 30 seasonal holiday stores, though published counts of what finally closed range from 431 to 461.
Who owns KB Toys now?
The KB Toys brand belongs to Strategic Marks, a California brand-revival company run by Ellia Kassoff, which filed for the trademark in 2016 after Toys R Us let the earlier registration go unused. Since July 2024, Firefly Brand Management has run KB Toys licensing, including a master toy deal with MH Enterprises.