US - LEGO Friends Advent Calendar

[atmail35]

I noticed in a email today that King Arthurs Toys is showing the Friends Advet Calendar as a pre-order. It is $39.99, but I wonder if other retailers might be getting these? Perhaps this store was not notified about the shortage? I somtimes buy Playmoil from this site as LEGO is generally marked up.

http://www.kingarthurstoys.com/lego+331 ... t+calendar" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[doodlebird]

Seriously though I am going to call LEGO Marketing. They should have made a Halloween Advent calendar to count down to Halloween with Monster Fighters! In fact they should make a generic countdown calendar to countdown to any occassion (birthday, graduation, whatever). I would totally purchase that!

holy cow. that is genius. i'd buy them all year long. wouldn't most of us? a lego set a day keeps our dollars away.

[Legobrandon]

Sold out in Vancouver. The employee on the phone said they will try to order some more. Doubt that will be very likely though.

[just2good]

Found a fair amount at my LEGO store in South Florida.

(skip to 0:25)
I've also released a review for it.

[Ice]

I totally forgot to pick one up at Beaverton the other day (was too into getting the Avengers sets). :(

[Ice]

Sold out in Vancouver. The employee on the phone said they will try to order some more. Doubt that will be very likely though.

Back instock. They have 2 left.

[vynsane]

The Asst. Manager at the Palisades NY store is holding one for me to pick up on Sunday, even though he said they still have quite a few. I would be willing to pick them up and ship them out for cost+shipping, but I don't have the money to front anyone, so I would need the money in advance. I could make the trip over there again, so it doesn't need to get to me before Sunday. Private message me if you're interested.

[Legobrandon]

Sold out in Vancouver. The employee on the phone said they will try to order some more. Doubt that will be very likely though.

Back instock. They have 2 left.

Probably gone by now.

[Legobrandon]

Just called, they will be getting another shipment in on Tuesday!

So it looks like these won't be too limited after all.

[just2good]

How many do you think "one shipment" contains? I wonder if it is 24 or 100 or what. I wish i thought to ask the manager on Saturday.

When I went, there was around 20. The guy there said that was all they had gotten, and they only sold around 5. So I guess 25 is a good estimate.

[unclephn]

Just a thought, but if all of us AFOL's are the ones buying these all up, who'll be left to even want them on the secondary market? Will parents even know that a Friends Advent Calendar even exists by the time the Christmas shopping season is in full swing?

[Zeya]

I got one today at the Santa Clara CA store. I asked if it was true that its a limited run and the guy said they only got the one shipment and it might be gone by end of October and to buy it now. Just like you all said. They had a healthy amount of them there.

I need to decide to sell it this year or next. Maybe I should've gotten more than one.

I mainly went for the haunted house btw. Had the catalog 10% coupon and got the polybag.

[meyerc13]

Just called, they will be getting another shipment in on Tuesday!

So it looks like these won't be too limited after all.

You are in Canada. The limited availability seems to be only in the USA. Many retailers other than LEGO are carrying these in Europe, but more than one US LEGO store manager has told me that they got one shipment, of about 250, and they will not be getting restocked (I took a roadtrip to Chicago over the Labor Day weekend and visited three LEGO stores much to my wife's dismay).

Yes, most of the US stores still have a good stock left, but since they started with 250 and the holidays are months away I don't think that is surprising. The question is, will enough parents know about this that they'll be looking for these in November only to find the shelves bare? Based on my observations in the three LEGO stores I visited, kids are noticing these but parents aren't buying (yet). So if the parents are planning to pick these up later they might be out of luck and might turn to the secondary market.

However, as I said in an earlier post, I don't think enough parents will know that these exist to drive the prices insanely high. And since they are readily available outside of the US, some international sellers will undoubtedly be able to undercut any US seller demanding an insane price.