Toys R Us has announced plans to expand its footprint for the holidays by opening nearly 350 “Holiday Express” locations for the season.  The locations will include over 80 pop-up stores in malls, and over 260 Holiday Express shops within existing Babies R Us locations.

The pop-up stores will average 4,000 square feet, located in malls and other shopping centers in major markets.  With mall operators scrambling for tenants, pop-up stores such as the ones planned by TRU can probably be opened at very favorable rents.  And many malls have very limited availability of toys since the shuttering of the KB Toys chain. 

The Babies R Us locations will average 2,500 square feet, roughly triple the normal toy space in BRU stores.