The article is full of speculations like these. It's as if they didn't have enough content but needed to hit certain number of words.

They already have one in Seattle with a large section dedicated to Echos and Kindles, so it's not without precedent for them.

Now why an ecommerce giant is retrogressing to brick and mortar I can't imagine.

It's just an additional sales channel ... if they can have a place where a) people can go to physically preview inventory, and b) can go to immediately obtain merchandise when they can't wait for it.

Additionally, it can help to simplify logistics ... if there are more locations where they person can go pick up their package rather than having to deliver it, surely that can be a boon to their operations.

So they can same-day-deliver to my house in [not a big city].

Obviously they would sell other things too.

But the Echos would likely be front and center. The toys for enriching young children would be replaced by toys for enriching young AI. It's like a private hell designed specifically for a toy store.

The Echo has amazing potential for toys. There's already a large selection of "speaking" toys for boys and girls of all ages, from dolls to board games. All would profit from an Alexa-like technology level. But unless you want your children to order a few pounds of ice cream from Amazon Fresh, you would have to remove the Amazon store part from the kid's Echo (or have much better voice recognition).

It would be beneficial for Amazon in the long run (making people more at ease with voice assistants), but I doubt that this would be the reason for Amazon to buy ToysRUs

Would be fun to say something over intercom, then hear hundreds of echos answer back.