(BNS) The Story Of Toys R Us

I don't wanna grow up because maybe if I did, I couldn't have rad history talk about being a Toys R Us kid. You may have noticed that your CRM system has become crazy with bots and agents at the Tech Brew ride home. We love AI, but not when it's used to commit fraud or launch ransomware. Fortunately, Momoto, the creator of continuous verification, now offers the next generation of continuous CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA. Momoto Continuous CAPTCHA diverts only the agents and bots attempting to gain access to your CRM through registration forms. With Momoto, good agents can do what agents do best, enable your customers to have more productive experiences on your website or app while stopping bad agents from defrauding you or your customers. It's a win for everyone except the cyber criminals. Right now, our listeners can purchase a year of Memoto Continuous Capture for $5,000, a 20% discount on their lowest price plan. To learn more, head to memoto.ai/ridehome. That's mimoto.ai/ridehome. Welcome to Rad History, a podcast about the eighties and nineties, the last time things were relatively normal and chill. I'm Brian McCullough. I thought of another holiday themed episode for you because I thought of toys. On a Saturday in, say, 1987, the ritual for my family tended to go like this now and again. Pile into the family car sometime after lunch, probably still in your soccer uniform. The minivan would merge into a slow moving caravan of station wagons and wood paneled wagoneers, all heading toward the same big rectangular box rising out of the strip mall asphalt. You'd see it from across the parking lot, the rainbow block letters, the backwards r, the cartoon giraffe beckoning from the sign like a mascot for childhood itself. It hit you the moment the automatic glass doors slid open, A distinct industrial cocktail of vinyl, cardboard, sugar, and floor wax. It was the smell of potential. It was the sensory overload of walking into a warehouse that didn't just sell toys. It seemed to stockpile them for the apocalypse. You were greeted by the towering shelves stocked so high that the boxes on the top tier blurred into a colorful haze near the industrial lighting. You grabbed a shopping cart, not a small basket, but a cart deep enough to hold a bicycle, and you entered the racetrack. The floors were bare tile or concrete. No frills, just a kind of fluorescent runway stretching into the distance. And then the aisles. There was the world of Nintendo Isle glowing with fiber optic signs where you had to grab a yellow paper slip to claim a video game from a terrifying cage like booth at the front of the store. There were the aisles of pink and purple boxes for Barbie, the walls of blister packed GI Joes, and the bicycles dangling from the ceiling like bats in a cave. For a couple generations of Americans, Toys R Us wasn't just a store. It was …