Where Are They Now – Geoffrey Giraffe
In the 1980s and 90s Geoffrey Giraffe was the epitome of ChildHood merriment. A cultural icon of his time. Beloved by millions before unfortunate, but avoidable, circumstances ruined his life.This is part four in a five part interview.
Please start at Part One
Biloxi Gulf Beach
To mark the end of our time together, Geoff and his friends decided to throw a classic beach bonfire BBQ as a send off. It started just around dusk with everyone bringing something; potluck style. Harkening back to my time living here I brought all of the trappings of a classic crawfish boil. I’m not on a per diem or anything but I hoped if I brought the fixins, the experts would help me make it. Tim brought ribs to cook over coals buried in the sand. Mariah brought a Gatorade sideline sized bucket of Sangria that she had been making over the course of the last couple of days. Some of Geoff’s other friends that I haven’t met are here too with side dishes, more drinks, and firewood. Lamar took one look at ingredients, one look at me, and agreed to be the master of the boil.
Lamar: How hard do you think this is? All this shit (potatoes, crawfish, corn) goes in the pot with a fuckload of seasoning. Then you boil the shit out of it and eat it.
Travis: If you say so.
Lamar: I will take care of this; but you will be my beer bitch for the evening.
Travis: Solid deal, you shall not go empty handed all night.
As the sun set, after everyone had eaten their fill and were sitting around the fire with drinks and telling stories; Geoff and I wandered off to the end of the pier that juts out into the Gulf. We stood there in darkness looking back at the new group of friends that keeps him company. We both have a solo cup of Mariah’s sangria. We plastic cheers and are silent for a moment.
Geoff: At first it was a professional rivalry; but it turned into a fight for survival. I fucked over Kevin really bad. It got really public and I’m pretty sure that despite any good I’ve done; that’s what I’ll be remembered for.
The Kevin that Geoff is talking about is Kevin Barnett… K.B. Of Kaybee Toy Store fame. KayBee always lived in the shadow of Toys R Us; but was somehow typically more accessible with their smaller footprint and American Mall economics. Where Toys R Us was a warehouse, requiring the economics of a CostCo; KayBee was a small form factor that makes Trader Joe’s look like a palatial estate.
Geoff: It was friendly at first – two family dynasties competing for space and prestige. Did you know that they used to have retail awards?
Travis: No.
Geoff: Yup. Same time, place and venue as the AVN awards. Like, no joke, down the hall in another conference hotel ballroom. We shared catering. It wasn’t high class. We knew it wasn’t the Emmy’s but every industry has this. God even customer service organizations have an awards ceremony – how fucking stupid is that? So we were, at first, friendly rivals. Toys R Us was the established dominance in the space. We won the awards, we ruled the roost, we owned Christmas. We were the “Juggernaut Bitch!”
I throw him a sideways glance over the top of my solo cup.
Geoff: Like the meme? Do you get it?
Travis: I get it, it’s just. Dated? Maybe stupid?
Geoff: Fuck you.
Travis: Cheers.
We both down our sangria.
Travis: I’m empty.
Geoff holds up a thermos.
Geoff: Mariah brought travelers.
Geoff unscrews the top of the thermos and pours both of us a very full cup of bathtub sangria.
Travis: What are the odds that this will kill us?
Goeff: Might be a moot point. So it really started the first year K.B came out on top. The retail equivalent of picture of the year. It was a place that we had held for so long that we didn’t think it was possible to lose.
Travis: We’re you happy for him?
Geoff: Not in the slightest. I figured it was a fluke. We joked about it at the after party; but they weren’t jokes. You get me? The next year they weren’t even pretending to be jokes.
Travis: Who threw the first punch?
Geoff: Figuratively? Him. Literally? Me. And from there on out things went from friendly rivalry to world war three.
The bitter rivalry was well documented in the press. What was never well documented was the personal toll. Toys R Us took out attack ads first asking shoppers why they would shop in a shed when there was a barn full of toys just around the corner? Kaybee’s ads touted that there was a Kaybee in every mall in America and you could shop for toys, have snacks, ride a merry go round and catch a movie all in the same place. A trip to Kaybee could be a full event for the whole family. To the unknowing public these were typical customer attracting antics. Behind the scenes?
Geoff: It was trench warfare. I didn’t know it at the time but ten percent of our OPEX was lawyers. Suits, counter suits, trying to lock in site specific exclusives from brands. If i’m being honest; the mall gambit fucked us a lot. They had an extremely valid point: we didn’t have a food court, or a movie theater; but we had space so we tried to use that to our advantage.
With the extra space Toys R Us could offer demo play areas for high price point items from Nintendo and Sony. Bikes – a physical impossibility for the competition – were a big seller. Hell; I got my first bike at Toys R Us. I remember riding it around the aisles to test it out. I thought it was great, my mom and the people on the stuffed animal aisle were less than pleased with six year old me plowing through the middle of their afternoon.
Geoff: When things went extremely bad was when it went out of the boardroom and into the living room. It was ego, pure hurt and bruised ego. I want to say it was on both sides but I think I’m the one who started it again. Toys R Us was headquartered in Jersey and I heard that Kevin was vacationing in the CatSkills. It wasn’t in my backyard – but god damn if it wasn’t close enough to take a three day weekend to fuck with him.
Geoff: You can do a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request for the police report if you want the official statement. If you would like to see how they classified what I did. I don’t think that there is an official police code for “smashing out a car window and filling it, to the absolute brim, with every graphic sex toy that you can find”. Keep in mind that this is DECADES before Amazon. I couldn’t, from the anonymity of my living room, spend $30,000 dollars on various … items … and have them discreetly delivered to my doorstep. I spent the better part of two weeks – okay, not me, a variety of assistants – scouring as many sex stores as they could find between our HQ and upstate New York. Fuck man, I expensed that shit.
Travis: I’m sorry what?
Geoff: I sent out a cadre of low level corporate assistants, with company credit cards, to some of the seediest parts of Jersey and New York to procure a variety of the most graphic sex toys they could locate. And then I had them submit expense reports to appropriately recoup the cost and account for it in the P&L statements. I rented a truck, drove up to the Catskills in the middle of the night, smashed in a couple of his car windows and poured everything into his car for him and his kids to find first thing in the morning when they were headed out to breakfast.
Travis: And that was the start? Jesus Christ dude.
Geoff: Yeah. And it escalated from there. It was like that Connery speech from “The Untouchables”. “They put one of yours in the hospital; you put two of theirs in the morgue.”
Geoff: It was an unmitigated shit show.
To be concluded in part five
