Toys R Us doesn't surprise me. Over the last few years supermarkets have been ramping up their toy isles, and then Smyth's arrived on the scene, not to mention online retailers undercutting prices.

I guess Maplins has a similar issue with online retailers. Back in the day they were the only place you could think of to buy that sort of stuff. These days it's readily available online.

Maplin's problem is worse, regarding online retailers. They are selling cheap electronic devices and components to, generally, technically literate people... There is no way they can really compete against cheap Chinese imports sold on Fleabay.

Since I posted this this morning, both have gone into administration.

Not surprised by Toys R Us, expensive toys, bad quality baby furniture and a ridiculous reward system ( earn pathetic vouchers like £10 off £50 purchase)

Unfortunately I'm not really surprised that Maplin have gone under.

I was in my local store about 6 months ago for some fairly standard components: Metal bodied TRS and TS Jack plugs and 7m of good quality single conductor screened instrument cable with a coloured outer sleeve. Back in the 80s and 90s after they had expanded beyond being a mail order company with a couple of shops, into a full-fledged retail enterprise, this sort of order would have one of their staples and simple to fulfil. I was down at my local store probably every couple of months buying parts to make up various custom as well as standard audio leads and everything I needed was always in plentiful stock. On this occasion I left disappointed and empty-handed as they didn't have everything I needed, and if I had to buy one component on-line I might as well get all of them on-line.

On the other hand if I had wanted to buy any number of over-priced consumer electronic gizmos, I would have been in exactly the right place.

I seem to remember that Tandy had gone through exactly the same transformation form electronic hobbyist store to purveyors of expensive, poor quality electronic devices - anyone remember the awfulness that was the Realistic Monosynth or the Melos tape echo unit? - with the result that by the end of the 80s their shops were long gone from the high street.

My last visit to Maplin was to get a 16GB USB 3 thumb drive (important for disk recovery software - the idea was that you made a boot drive with it). Anyway, was asked by the assistant what I wanted, I told her, and she seemed to blank at that moment. She wanted to know if I was using it to “expand a phone”. What they had was painfully expensive, so I left. John Lewis had what I needed for about half the price, which was a bit of a surprise.

My experience with Maplin has been mixed - at times I’ve met a wall of stupid, other times they’ve been really helpful. It really seemed to depend on who you got served by. On assistant managed to steer me out of a situation with a clearly overly helpful customer who seemed to think he knew what I needed more than I knew what I needed (he was clearly very autistic). He was one of their regulars, I was told, and the assistant knew how to deal with him, as well as find me what I was genuinely after.

At uni, and a few years afterwards, I used Maplins quite a lot....... That was in the late 90's though.

My experience of Maplins is limited to GCSE projects when I needed components for electronics. Other than that, I only ever went in to buy IPA. Everything else was either too expensive, or cheap tat.

I've always found Maplin useful for when I need something in an emergency. Last time was when the fuse blew in my Bearded Dragon's thermostat. It's a quick blow 20mm fuse and they had them in-stock.

On the other hand I popped into Toys R Us yesterday to check the closing down sale and even with the discount they we're still overpriced on a lot of stuff. Can't think why they went under.