Archiving the History of the LEGO Retail Experience
I received two packages in the mail yesterday which is helping to round out my LEGO Super Heroes collection of Batman sets. I have all the big sets now, and just need to pick up the smaller sets to have them all. I’m building the Fun House at the moment:
Last week I stopped by the enormous Toys R Us that sits in the middle of Times Square in New York City. There selection is usually very good, with exclusive sets filling the shelves. But… because of the high rent of Times Square, prices for all sets are higher than regular retail prices. So something like the Death Star may be in stock, but instead of costing $400, it may be $440 or $460, negating the effect of any coupons or discounts they may be offering at the moment. Okay, onto the photos:
The ever-impressive display of buildings that hovers over the LEGO section:
You are greated by a display of Super Heroes sets:
And of course, they are still trying to unload loads of Star Wars Advent Calendars, even well into January:
Lots of older Collectible Minifigs for sale, as well as snow man polybags:
Alien Conquest sets till fill the shelves:
Slave One has disappeared from many stores, but still in stock here:
The LEGO Exclusives I mentioned: Fire Brigade, Tower Bridge, Maersk Train, etc:
Imperial Shuttle, Super Star Destroyer, AT-OT with Dropship (now getting very hard to find), plus Winter Bakery:
Mindstorms and the Shuttle set:
Come City sets:
More City:
Kingdoms still in stock:
Baseplates:
More City
Lots of Mill Village Raid:
And of course, Prince of Persia is still in stock:
Creator:
More Alien Conquest:
Star Wars, including some now-retired sets such as Battle for Endor, Palpatine’s Shuttle, etc:
More Star Wars LEGO:
Anyone need some Mandalorian Battle Packs?
Another view of the buildings:
More buildings:
Lots of Pirates of the Caribbean in stock:
They even have an endcap of Pirates of the Caribbean:
Racers:
Hero Factory:
Harry Potter and Pharaoh’s Quest:
Atlantis:
Plenty of red box Ninjago:
Toy Story 3:
Massive LEGO Friends Displays:
LEGO Friends:
City:
City:
Friends:
Friends:
Friends:
This is becoming a common site: parents spending 30 minutes feeling up bags of LEGO Minifigures in order to find the specific figures their kid wants, or in order to complete the set:
The 2012 LEGO Star Wars sets have begun arriving. Here we have the endor battle pack and the planet sets:
The wildly overpriced tie fighter:
The Y-Wing, and the much-anticipated clone battle pack:
The Droid Escape was not in the regular LEGO aisle, but at a display up front:
Anakin’s podracer polybag:
On the City side, nice to still see Public Transport in stock:
More city:
One of the newer City sets I hadn’t noticed before. Pretty cool:
They still can’t seem to unload the $38 Quiddich Match:
A random old Space Police set appeared on shelves:
The always present Prince of Persia, plus Mill Village Raid, and Earth Defense HQ:
They had pretty much the entire line of Alien Conquest back in stock:
Tons of Creator sets:
Technic:
I was surprised to see a couple Fire Temples in stock:
A nice package arrived in the mail adding five more LEGO Tusken Raiders to my collection:
I was pleasantly surprised to see some transparent clear and transparent black bricks on the Pick A Brick wall. I had two of the holiday boxes to fill up, so I scooped up a whole bunch of each.
So many transparent black 1×2 bricks in one place:
Transparent 1×2 bricks:
Transparent 1×1 plates:
My “haul.” I didn’t have a lot of time, so I didn’t stack them in the boxes, I just threw a bunch in:
I haven’t counted up how many of each I ended up with, but here are the four varieties they had:
My first trip to the LEGO Store Rockefeller Center in 2012. Nothing too unusual, but nice to see the new Super Heroes display and recent sets. They moved the store around, moving City to where Star Wars used to be and vice versa. Series 6 minifigs were on display, and the only real sale items I saw were the Christmas tree polybags. Enjoy the photos!
A friend was able to snap photos of LEGO at a different Walmart for me. Unfortunately, because of bad timing, they couldn’t scan in the sets to check prices. My guess is that log cabin and the Harry Potter stuff would have been marked down. I may head over tomorrow. Anyhow, enjoy the photos:
This Walmart had a huge LEGO section, both sides of the aisle, and pretty well stocked too! Notice the friends sets in the upper right corner:
Some of the newer City sets have arrived:
A mish mash of stuff, including Star Wars advent calendars, still in stock!
Duplo:
Walmart seems to mix Kre-o in more often than other stores I have seen. Target does this a bit too:
The other side of the aisle:
Some Dino sets and creator stuff:
Harry Potter, Super Heroes, Pirates of the Caribbean, Friends, and more:
More creator plus Hero Factory:
Ninjago – still a couple red boxes left:
Still waiting for the 2012 Star Wars sets to arrive:
More Star Wars:
More Star Wars:
Some new City sets:
And finally, 2012 Ninjago sets:
My first trip to the LEGO Store in 2012, and I was greeted with my first look at some of the new sets.
Like an oasis in the distance, the LEGO Store appears…
As usual, plenty of activity. The Build a Mini station always seems to be busy:
An AFOL talking to the manager. I like when the LEGO employees are as into it as the customers:
The large Friends display seemed to be popular:
My first look at the mini modular set. My original intention was to buy this set with a 10% coupon I had. But I have to say: I found it very underwhelming. Maybe I am spoiled by having the full sized modulars, but I can’t think of a reason to buy and build this other than “collectability.” They had a ton of them in stock, and word is that they aren’t moving very quickly at all. I can’t figure out who the target audience is. Yes, I will likely end up with one, and perhaps this will be one of those ‘holy grail’ sets down the road. But for now, my reaction is: “meh”
Series 6 of the Collectible Minifigures are now in stock. An employee said they went through 20 cases in just a couple of days.
My first look at the Super Heroes set 6862 with Superman and Wonder Woman. Very cool looking set:
The mini modular set on the shelf, along with Joust. These sets were all over the store:
You can see all of the mini modulars on the top shelves:
They still had a few sale items. About 10-20% off a few sets:
Funny that the space sets are next to the castle sets:
The Star Wars section moved to the opposite side of the store:
Lots of Imperial Shuttles available:
I think these are older Star Wars magnet sets, but I’m not entirely sure:
The newer magnets were on sale:
Kingdoms Joust:
They still have Alien Conquest in stock. The smaller boxes were 10% off:
The Unimog was 10% off:
The Joust set in the main window had tipped over:
Their Friends selection. My first time seeing the treehouse set:
Red boxed Ninjago stuff was on sale:
The had one winter bakery left:
I still think this is a cool little set, calendar:
Folks on the Brickset and ToysnBricks forums are mentioning that Wal-Mart seems to have found some more palettes of sale items. Below is what my local Wal-Mart had in stock this morning. The big sale items are:
With the LEGO Snowtrooper Battle Packs #8084 disappearing from shelves, I figured I should grab a bunch of snowtroopers now before they become less commonplace. These 20 arrives in the mail this week, ready for battle:
