toy makers stopped shipping to child world stores, making it hard to keep toys on shelves, and many people working for child world were fired and replaced by some people who formerly worked for toys r us who tried to save child world. child world filed for bankruptcy in may 1992 and closed half of its stores. soon they discovered another toy store, kiddie city, who was also having the same problems. they tried to merge kiddie city with child world while holding clearance sales on all 71 child world stores. child world says it's their only plan left of staying open. the july 12 deadline came and passed with no merger announcement, and the inventory clearance sale was now a going out of business sale. despite this, merger talks continued in the hopes that they might be able to pull off a last-minute deal. however, on august 2, child world announced that the plan failed and continued the process of shutting down the last 71 stores in the next 6 weeks.