Sets UNavailability

[The Cobra]

So, no Castle Advent Calendar in North America. But what about the rest of the world? I'd like to know if in your country you can buy every Lego set or no. Or, better: list sets that are NOT available in your local shops.

tbc = to be confirmed

ITALY - 2008

Mars Mission - Full line

Batman - Full line

Castle - 7041 Troll battle wheel <- has been spotted in an Auchan mall, priced 40 Euros as it should be.

Impulse - 5618 Troll warrior - 5619 Crystal hawk - 5620 Street cleaner - 5621 Coast guard kayak

Agents - 8637 Volcano base

City - 7235 Police motorbike (2008 edition, with blue stickers)

Spongebob - Full line

Belville - Full line

Star wars - sadly, some sets are marked as "Limited edition" (usually limited to Toys center)

To the best of my knowledge, Castle Advent calendar was only spotted in Bossi mall (Saronno), while I have no proof of City Advent calendar sightings in any Italian shop. They both were listed in the Italian paper catalog.

ITALY - 2007

Mars Mission - 7691 ETX Alien Mothership Assault, 7693 ETX Alien Strike, 7695 MX-11 Astro Fighter.

Aqua Raiders - Full line (available in 2008 in one toy store chain only)

Castle - 7009 The final joust

7907 City Advent Calendar

7898 Cargo train deluxe and 10182 Cafè Corner are now available (September '08).

Please note that all of the above sets are available for Italy on Shop@Home.

[Tenorikuma]

Japan, 2008

No Agents

No Belville

No Spongebob

No Trains

No impulse sets

2008 Batman and Technic are available but difficult to find.

Japan does get some bulk brick sets not available anywhere else.

Edited September 7, 2008 by Tenorikuma

[Norro]

I thought this would have something to do with the UN Lego in Ireland is available, just prohibitively expensive. I would say NZ is the worst place I have ever personally lived for sourcing Lego....

God Bless,

Nathan

[Lt. Col. Thok]

North America

Castle - The Good wizard

That's about it....

[VBBN]

North america?

We had the figgin MT-201 here in Michigan.

I would say North America is actualy the best for stocking them. They mostly are best on S@H, but TRU and Target are plentiful.

[Shoc]

England - 2008

Batman - Full Line

SpongeBob Squarepants - Full Line

England - 2006/7/8

Avatar - Full Line (2 sets)

I think for this year that's all we have missing, two really good (parts-wise) licensed themes. Fortunately they are available on Shop @ Home. If I missed any others out, someone correct me, but I think that's all. We never got Avatar at all, not even on S@H...

:skull:

Edited September 6, 2008 by Shoc

[brickzone]

I would qualify Norro's statement. Lego in Ireland is expensive as with Lego in Europe in general, but we do have shops that sell at S@H prices (Smyth's Toys), and those prices in turn are cheaper often than other European countries, even Germany. Other S@H prices are too, e.g. Green Grocer and Town Plan at €130 rather than 150. Now, there is less competition than some other countries (across the board; capitalism here mainly means price-matching, monopolies, weak regulation and screw the consumer), so you do not have as many promotions, sales, attempts to woo customers with bargains. Saw much more of this in Germany both times I was there (Munich and Hannover) you'd save loads by shopping around and buying a set here and there in various shops.

Most sets are released here, Avatar is an example of one not available here, and I believe Spongebob is S@H only. Batman is in the shops here.

Castle '07 was exclusive last year to Argos (UK catalogue retailer) and they only released three sets, Skeleton Carriage, Skeleton Tower and King's Castle, the latter at higher than S@H prices (also the tower was a whopping €60 at S@H price here). Fortunately Smyth's Toys has both the entire Castle '07 and '08 lines this year, except Skeleton Ship Attack and Troll Wheel which are S@H exclusive, and no sign of impulse sets. The Castle '07 Complete Castle Collection (incl. Skeleton Ship Attack) was far cheaper here on S@H than Germany, I was very glad to buy it.

Edited September 6, 2008 by brickzone

[SkyOtic]

Belgium is worse:

Star wars clone wars? in my town they say it doesn't exist

impulse sets like street cleaner and kayak isn't availible either.

and some other sets

i hope it will change in the future

[Pencoin]

England - 2008

Batman - Full Line

SpongeBob Squarepants - Full Line

England - 2006/7/8

Avatar - Full Line (2 sets)

I think for this year that's all we have missing, two really good (parts-wise) licensed themes. Fortunately they are available on Shop @ Home. If I missed any others out, someone correct me, but I think that's all. We never got Avatar at all, not even on S@H...

:skull:

We havent got any of the impulses in stores yet though either have we? .

[Capt. Bluebeard]

We havent got any of the impulses in stores yet though either have we? .

Really? They have them in my local Co-Op and Dominoes toy store.

Bluebeard, out-

[Matija]

Do countries that don't have S@H at all count? In that case, I'd like to put Norway on the list.

[The Cobra]

Of course they do. Join in!

[Dragonator]

I would say NZ is the worst place I have ever personally lived for sourcing Lego....

Ah, to true. It's almost impossible to get all the larger sets, and the few that do make it here don't arrive until around 18 months after they were released in the rest of the world. Still, if you know the right people, you can get most of the sets. For example, I know a guy who exclusively stocked a couple of the Eiffel Towers and sets like that. He's going to try and get me a Taj Mahal too. I still haven't been able to source a market street though, and S@H shipping is just so expensive...

[Still Raindrop]

Rwanda didn't have any LEGO.

[snefroe]

Belgium is worse:

Star wars clone wars? in my town they say it doesn't exist

impulse sets like street cleaner and kayak isn't availible either.

and some other sets

i hope it will change in the future

i'm ok with the set availability, the main problem is a lack of an actual Lego shop, so you have to either go to Köln for parts/exclusives or order them online...

i believe Malta is the worst...

[Sammael]

Some of the themes are currently unavailable in Serbia, but we do have the majority of sets... at prohibitively expensive prices. Sets that sell for $70 at s@h (which is, of course, unavailable here) cost 150 EUR in stores...

[Navy Trooper Fenson]

Germany has just no new Batman sets.

But the whole Star Wars line is difficult to find. First it was very hard to find new sets in summer 2007. The only set that I´ve found of the summer line was just the Naboo N-1 Fighter, who I first saw in the city in September! The new 2008 line is not aviable in the city, except for the Anakin SF, Halfire and AT-AP. Rouge SHadow and the BPs are just aviable in LEGO Stores, TRU and Galeria.

But it gets even worse: The whole CW line is now just aviable in TRU, Galeria an the four LEGO Stores and the only sets that the normal stores should get are the Magna fighter, V-19 and AT-TE and not until the beginning of October! The rest is exclusive to TRU, Galeria and LEGO.

LEGO really helps the little toy shops, when they make all bestseller sets to Exclusives for just one chain of stores...

[Cwetqo]

In Slovenia we have everything except some sets that are marked as "hard to get" at S@H. The prices are roughly the same as on German S@H (US$ converted 1:1 to Euro)

The only problem is that S@H don't ship to Slovenia...

[darkrebellion]

Well here in Mexico we don

Edited September 24, 2008 by darkrebellion

[voxel]

Hi!

I travel to Israel quite frequently (work). LEGO-wise, I consider this a developing country.

[Darth_Legois]

Japan, 2008

No Agents

No Belville

No Spongebob

No Trains

No impulse sets

2008 Batman and Technic are available but difficult to find.

Japan does get some bulk brick sets not available anywhere else.

I noticed this while I was there last week

But they have some older sets still there like

Street cleaner, mini-digger ect..

And in Japan it is more expensive...

Funny, Australia got the Air Ambulance briefly at Kmart MAUAHAHAHAHA!

But several sets [most if not all] are overpriced

But we get lots of sales on LEGO all year round [Especially from July to january] so It sortof balances it out but still its overpriced, and we miss out on some sets too

[eti]

I find it amazing that S@H doesn't simply ship worldwide. As long as people pay with creditcards - and pay the doubtlessly higher shipping costs to remote countries - I don't see why they wouldn't ship to some countries. Warzones and such excluded, maybe.

[Dadster]

Is it the TLC not shipping product to a specific country?

Or is it the various stores in each country that determines whether or not they'll stock the sets?

I'd sure hope that the TLC would gladly ship their product to any store in any country that wanted it, but I know (granted, not from personal experience) that stores have buyers who might dictate whether or not a store even stocks a specific item. Mayeb the lack of availability simply stems from a buyer not knowing if a product will make money for the store.

[BlueBard]

Well if you're complaining about North America come to Spain and you'll see what's total absence of availability. Firstly there are no many places to buy them and secondly when they bring them they disappear very very quickly. Just an example: in Madrid the only themes availables are Town (four or five sets), Creator (only the latest ones) and Star Wars, and of course no keychains, baseplates, doors and windows sets or things like that... And I really don't understand the reason because there are a lot of legomaniacs in this country, I can assure you and we even have an spanish lego magazine!

I sincerely hope the Advent Calendars will be available! If they doesn't I'll have to make a little trip to Paris and buy them there (I think 6 or 7 would be enough for me and some friends around here )

[AgentRick]

America doesn't have the coast guard platform yet, But I'm not sure if It's released yet in other countries.