Toys R Us will be opening its stores at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving day this year, in a growing struggle amongst retailers to open earlier and earlier for holiday shoppers. This "Black Friday creep," this inching forward, has been a big point of contention between stores looking to draw consumers.

The toy retailer, along with many other big-box retailers, has been progressively ratcheting up opening times on Thanksgiving itself to get a jump start on the important sales weekend to stay competitive with online competitors.

Macy's and Kohl's are among the big-name retailers preemptively announcing earlier holiday hours. Toys R Us, which generated $12.5 billion in sales during the last fiscal year, has been part of this sweep of stores since it first opened on Thanksgiving back in 2009, with each year slightly earlier than the one before.

"We had incredibly positive feedback with customers who shopped with us on Thanksgiving last year," Chief Merchandising Officer Richard Barry said in an interview with Fortune. "We saw that people really enjoyed the early opening, and frankly we saw the sales on Black Friday itself being very strong ... There wasn't as much pressure on that 10 p.m. or midnight time. It was more spread out and people had a more civilized shopping experience."

Besides changing the time, Toys R Us also announced other new aspects customers will see on Thanksgiving. The company is placing "Gurus" in the aisles to help navigate people through the store. There will also be express lanes to help speed up the checkout process for people buying two or less items.

Toys R Us places heavy priority on the Black Friday weekend, as November through January typically generates about 40 percent of its annual sales. The stores must compete with other brands like Walmart, Target and Amazon to take home the most of the $22 billion domestic toy market.