Month: December 2011

Last year, the LEGO Store had a pretty amazing 50% off sale. This year, I enjoyed the countdown to the sale along with members of the BrickSet.com and ToysNBricks.com forums, but alas, the sale was not as good as last year. I had planned to visit 3 different LEGO Stores today, but didn’t even go to one.

But… Target and Wal-Mart made up for it. Okay, let’s dig into the haul:

Target only had a few sets on sale for 20-30% off, but their holiday items were 50% off. Included in them were the Harry Potter Polybags:

They still had a bunch of Kingdoms Target Practice, and I grabbed all they had:

The regular toy aisles were an absolute disaster:

The discounts were really underwhelming:

They had a bunch of Star Wars Advent Calendars, but still $33:

My Target pickup after visiting two stores:

The first Wal-Mart I went to always has a small LEGO section. The Star Wars advent calendar was 50% off, so I picked up two:

Their clearance section was even more of a disaster than Target:

The second Wal-Mart I went to was amazing. They were stocked and organized like it was still September:

While nothing was marked on sale, if you scanned items, you would find that many of them were 50% off. Here is my cart that I quickly filled up:

A closer look at the aisles:

My final selections. I almost bought so much more. In the end, I got some Hoth Battle Packs, Kingdoms sets, a Pharaohs Quest set, City of Atlantis, and a whole bunch of Mace Windu’s Starfighters:

Until next Dec 26th!

I stopped by the LEGO Store and Toys R Us just as Hanukkah was starting, and a few days before Christmas, and found lots of out of stock LEGO merchandise, and some empty shelves.

The Toys R Us I went to had two LEGO aisles:

I was surprised to see a Hogwart’s Castle on the shelves, though with the TRU markup, it’s quite expensive:

Another surprise, At-Ats, which I know are harder and harder to come by:

With the Kingdoms line being retired, all they had was Mill Village Raid:

They still had $29.99 advent calendars in stock:

Moving on to the LEGO Store:

The Kingdoms selection here isn’t much better:

I can’t remember if I have seen this airport before:

They seemed to have all of the new City sets in stock:

Long gone are the Emerald Nights and Imperial Flagships. No Fire Brigade or Winter Toy Shop:

They still had some Tower Bridges in stock, as well as Maersk Trains:

The Super Heroes line has hit the shelves, but the regular sets are selling out immediately. Very limited selection for Harry Potter as well:

Side by side display of Queen Anne’s Revenge and the Black Pearl:

The winter sets:

They still had Endor sets in stock, I expect these to be retiring soon. They had most of the big sets in stock: Death Star, Imperial Shuttle, Super Star Destroyer. But the AT-OT Dropships were gone:

They still have plenty of Alien Conquest, another theme that is retiring. But the biggest set: Earth Defense HQ was gone:

Technic:

Creator. Plenty of Apple Tree Houses in stock:

Dino, Cars 2 and the new Sponge Bob sets:

Cute little set, but this ship is no replacement for Imperial Flagship:

And finally, they still had Brick Calendars in stock. Cute little set:

I recently built the LEGO Republic Frigate set #7964. When it came out, I really liked the new clone minifigs, and bought multiples of this set to built a little army of Wolfpack Clone Troopers.

I love the colors in this set, and found the ship impressively large. But, it’s not among my favorite Star Wars vehicles because it just consists of a few small areas inside the vehicle, none of which are connected. Okay, let’s look at the photos…

I like the amount of detail they put into this, along with the dark read and tan:

All of the inside areas. Yes, there is a lot of playability here, but I do which the internal areas were connected somehow.

One compartment:

The impressive engines:

The puny cockpit fits one minifig:

Not a bad selection of minifigs, but for the price ($120), only 5 figures seems like too few:

Makes you wonder, why doesn’t LEGO make more minifig faces with horrible scars on them?

It looks as though LEGO is retiring the Emerald Night train set 10194. I slowly watched it go out of stock on site after site, and found some good deals on the remaining few, thanks to the forum members at Brickset.com and Toysnbricks.com. I ended up with 10 of these sets mint in box, plus one set that I built.

I really think this is an incredible – and dare I say beautiful – LEGO set. The styling, colors, and unique parts made this an incredible deal. There has been much speculation about how far the prices will rise on the aftermarket. I do think this set will long be viewed as a classic. Regardless of the monetary value, I just couldn’t resist adding some of these to my collection! And of course, dream of opening them up for one very long train!

I had my first sighting of the 2012 LEGO Super Heroes sets in the wild. I have already received 6863 Batwing Battle Over Gotham City in the mail, but it’s nice to see these on the shelves, even if it was only a set or two.

A closer look:

I don’t remember seeing this before, Ninjago Destiny’s Bounty. Yet another LEGO ship!

City Dump Truck:

Even with constant Buy 1 Get 1 50% off deals, there are still plenty of City Transports on the shelves. Also, the one overpriced Harry Potter set. MSRP: $19.99. TRU Price: $37.99.

LEGO Ninjago Booster Packs. These were interesting, priced at $5.99, between the pricing of Collectible Minifigs and regular Ninjago Figs. Each box had only one character in it, there were 3 different characters to choose from.

Kendo Cole seems to have the cool new headgear in it:

I don’t remember seeing this Cars set before: Oil Rig Escape:

These Racers sets looked new too:

The Hero Factory style Super Heroes:

Still plenty of wreathes on the rack:

New Sponge Bob set. I always think these sets look cool. Haven’t bought any though.

Another Cars set I don’t remember seeing before:

Interesting new packaging for Hero Factory:

Not a bad deal for Battle for Geonosis:

I bought this set mostly for the minifigs, and because I got it at a great price, but I was really impressed with the level of detail and the overall “mood” of the design. Tons of skull and bone imagery, and an overall dark feel – not what you expect in a regular LEGO set.

Right out of the box:

The minifigs are very detailed. LEGO clearly knows the value of these things, and produced quite a few for this series:

More minifigs:

These hair pieces are kind of offensive – especially those which are one molded piece for the hair and the hat.

The completed ship:

A closer look:

A peak inside the captains quarters:

The rear of the ship has incredible detail:

Tons of skulls in this set:

Side by side with Imperial Flagship:

While Imperial Flagship is a larger, more detailed ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge stacks up pretty nicely:

Overall, a very cool set!

I am happy to be celebrating the first anniversary for this blog. In that time, I have published 80 posts, pretty much all of them sharing lots of photos of how I experience the hobby of collecting LEGO. I have posted nearly 600 photos on the blog in the past year. These posts focus mostly on the retail experience of LEGO in stores – which differs greatly from most other LEGO blogs I am a fan of. Many share reviews of sets, LEGO news, and of course: all the cool things that people build with these little bricks.

I love the idea of capturing and archiving the experience of finding LEGO sets in stores. Seeing which sets that are now retired, were once plentiful on the shelves; how different stores display their sets; and what deals I am finding. That, in a few years, we will be able to look back on these photos and see nothing but sets that will be retired. Imagine looking back at 600 images of toy stores from 1978 with Star Wars toys on the shelf; or 1984 with GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, and the like.

And perhaps I focus on this aspect of the hobby because I have more time to shop for LEGO, than I do to build. 🙂

Besides what you from me on this blog, I engage in conversation on a nearly daily basis on two LEGO communities:

• Brickset
• ToysnBricks

I would like to thank the members of those communities for all that they have shared!

And of course, I am still a fan of the really wonderful LEGO blog http://gimmelego.blogspot.com as well as http://www.brothers-brick.com/.

Looking forward to another year!
Thanks.
-Dan

I had a couple nice surprises today. At Target, I finally found the LEGO Target Gift Card. They had 5 on the pegs, and when I asked if they had more, the Target team member expressed shock that I even found these:

And at Toys R Us, I found one Clone Walker Battle Pack, on sale for 33% off:

Oddly, these two sets were on the shelf at Toys R Us: Tower Bridge and Imperial Shuttle. Both boxes were very beat up, and were regular price (though Tower Bridge would have qualified for Buy One Get One 50% Off Sale:

After days and days of the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendars being on sale, they still have plenty of stock. I’ve heard that in Europe, these are harder to come by.

A small sale on Ninjago Training Outpost:

The final days of Alien Conquest being on the shelves. I want to pick up another one of these Earth Defense HQ Sets:

They still had two of the Ninjago Lightning Dragon Battle sets in stock, even at the sale price:

I took a peak at the new Ninjago snake sets, and was really impressed by some of the minifigs:

And finally, it’s always nice to see a red bicycle in a set:

Target has a sale on LEGO this week, Buy One Get One 50% off, but only on the City theme. I figured I would show you what is left on the shelves after a busy holiday weekend. I ordered online for this sale, and got a City Corner and Bank Transfer set. It worked out to about $35 each after all the discounts I applied. Not amazing, but not bad for two sets that I don’t think will be around much longer. Okay, onto the shelves…

Still plenty of the Bank Transfer sets left. Note they are also discounted by $5.

They had two Police Stations left, and a bunch of Fire Stations:

The shelves were a bit messy.

Cars stuff also seemed to be on sale:

Ninjago:

Misc sets:

The Star Wars selection:

2012 Ninjago sets had their own endcap display:

Still plenty of the Target Practice sets left:

And a ton of the Harry Potter polybags. I assume we will see these discounted after Dec 25th:

I finally got around to building a LEGO Millennium Falcon. This one I bought off of eBay, the entire ship was brand new in the bags, and the minifigs were replaced with older versions. So I didn’t include the figures in the images below.

I have to say, I enjoyed this build way more than I thought I would. I know it’s the same design they’ve had for awhile, but it seemed to have a ton of playability.

The inside was really spacious, and I marveled at all the different areas that you can have scenes. The way the top fans open was ingenious as well. The cockpit was a disappointment, as was the fact that there isn’t an interior hallway connecting it to the rest of the ship. But… I 100% understand that there are tradeoffs to be made in order for LEGO to design such a funky looking ship.

Seeing this set makes me really want to the UCS Millennium Falcon, which is now fetching $1,000-$2,000 on eBay. Oh well. Maybe some day.