For me, the experience was mom trucking us kids up to Seattle to the Bon Marche department store. For my kids it was Toys R Us at the mall. For their kids it will probably be a web page.
Some might say that this is an evolutionary improvement but I would disagree.
I agree... it's always a sad day for me when such a major entity goes belly-up.
Some of the best memories of my life were from around 25 years ago, when my two sons were 3 & 5 years old. Each year, early in December, I would take a day off work and my wife and I would drive to Houston for a fun day of buying Christmas toys, MOSTLY from Toys 'R Us.... and, some clothes from the mall, and then have a nice lunch at Bennigans... the place where "Potato Skins" were invented.
The mall is the only thing still there... on life-support. Won't be long before it converts to a Mexican flea market.
It's the new SEARS Catalog...kids can look at pages and pages of toys for hours and hours, and make wishes and wishes...times do change. As kids we used the Sears catalog at Christmas...toys were NOT purchased at other times in the year. Now, I go into a young relative's bedroom, and it's mayhem with toys....
Online, you only find what you’re looking for. On a real shopping expedition one has the opportunity to fall in love with the unexpected. Online shopping is not an improvement for those who like the experience of discovering something new to them.