Meet the Woman Behind the Catchy Toys 'R' Us Jingle From the 80s

The woman behind the iconic Toys 'R' Us jingle, featured in the commercials from the 80s and 90s, wrote the tune with best-selling crime author James Patterson. 

Linda Kaplan Thaler wrote the catchy tune with Patterson back when they were both working at an ad agency — The J. Walter Thompson Agency — in 1982. 

"I wanted to think like a child because I was imagining a kid singing it," she said of the jingle, which she composed on a toy piano. "I knew that I had done something that was going to be catchy because there was a little 4-year-old running on the street and his mother said to him, 'If you don’t stop singing that song, we are never going to make it to school.' I thought, 'That’s cool.'"

She said when they wrote the song, they thought it was going to be a "one time thing," adding, "We never thought it was going to go on for so long."

The song has had a resurgence on social media after Toys 'R' Us announced they were closing their nearly 800 stores around the country. 

One person was so upset with the chain closing that he created a melancholy version of the jingle. The song was released on YouTube in minor keys and down tempo.

Longtime Toys 'R' Us mascot, Geoffrey the Giraffe, visited Jimmy Kimmel Thursday night and sang the jingle but could barely make it through the song without crying. 

Kimmel tried to console the mascot, who said he is now "out of a job" and blamed online shopping for the company’s bankruptcy. 

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