Anyone else finding their local TRU has been ravaged over Xmas, and there's very little good stuff to spend the £20 gift cards we were given before Xmas on?

My local store has probably less than 25% of the sets on the shelves it would usually have at any time of year, and there's a lot of City, Chima, Ninjago, and Scooby Doo sets nobody wants (i.e. not the good ones).

Vouchers expire on 16th of Jan, I think. Torn between buying the best of what they have now (not even sure what that would be!), and holding on for a week or so. Don't want to find that after that week, there's even less stock left!

Anyone any idea on what the TRU restock pattern might be? Or is this part of the alleged worldwide shortage?

I don't want to waste the gift cards, even though I got most of them for buying At-ATs for £83.14, with Gold card points, all of which I've sold, topping out at £150 sale price 

Ive cut and paste this from another thread to save me typing it again, but this is what I've heard. Please take it with a pinch of salt, as managers of tru dont always know whats going on in my experience.

"So I hit TRU (southampton) this morning haven't really had a chance to over xmas. Firstly the Lego shelves were literally halve empty. They had a Nijago set covering nearly the entire star wars section, most of the other Lego shelves had been filled with large remote controlled cars. Spoke to the manager and he said they weren't expecting another Lego delivery untill feb....

....Spoke with the assistant manager @ Poole and he said they weren't expecting another Lego delivery until the end of Jan, so the same story as my local.

Might be worth using them sooner than later mate, the pickings are already slim at my two nearest, and it dosn't look like they are getting more until after 16th jan at least, when the GC finishes.

So Ive used over half on mine now between the two stores and bought

x6 Ant Man Final Battle @£10ea

x4 Wall-E @£20ea

x2 Knowhere Escape Mission @£10ea (got them to price match amazon)

x1 75053 The Ghost @£50

x1 SOH £200

 

Gonna hit one more store this week that I haven't checked yet and try to get some ectos..

Which Toys R Us has Ecto-1's? I've searched most of Hampshire, Surrey and Berkshire and not seen any in stock. There's a reason they're fetching £60 on eBay

damn I saw an ecto-1 at the weekend, its gone now. I'm still new and learning :$

That was Bradford store

None that Ive seen, and i'm not sure it will be back @TRU.

I'm hoping 3rd time lucky,

Have you checked Portsmouth, thats where im heading tonight?

50 minutes ago, Crustybeaver said:

Which Toys R Us has Ecto-1's? I've searched most of Hampshire, Surrey and Berkshire and not seen any in stock. There's a reason they're fetching £60 on eBay

 

Edited January 6, 201610 yr by TheGallows

39 minutes ago, Crustybeaver said:

Which Toys R Us has Ecto-1's? I've searched most of Hampshire, Surrey and Berkshire and not seen any in stock. There's a reason they're fetching £60 on eBay

You can order Ecto-1 directly from SAH.  I was in the Watford Lego store a week ago and they had a whole stack of them on the shelves. No one should be paying 33% over MRSP for this.

7 minutes ago, LahH001 said:

You can order Ecto-1 directly from SAH.  I was in the Watford Lego store a week ago and they had a whole stack of them on the shelves. No one should be paying 33% over MRSP for this.

Yeah but luckily you're average ebay shopper isn't very savvy people will buy without actually checking lego.com.

I'm actually hitting up Manchester & Preston Tru's today so let's see what they have.

To save anyone's time looking in the same stores, my local one is Stevenage in Hertfordshire. There's also one near me towards Bedford, but it's more out of my way, and searching online for click & collect availability of things of interest seems to reveal a similar situation there, so not sure I will both making the trip.

My original plan was to go for mid price sets I knew didn't have long until retirement, and try to sell them soonish to bank the value of the voucher, but I may end up having to go for higher priced options, which I won't be able to sell for an acceptable profit until further down the line. Local store still has SOH (creator), TB (new box art), TIE fighter etc, but these don't fit with my plan.

I realize this is a "first world problem"!

Toys r us birstall, Leeds had full shelves Boxing Day. I've done a search just now and they still have most the diserable stuff,. Including ecto one

I did pick up a couple of Imperial Hotel's in Enfield TRU at the weekend for £90 each.  They also had 2 Villa Savyoye' on the shelves.  Both were pretty bashed up, so looked like returns and because it didn't appeal to me from a build perspective, left them on the shelves.  Generally this store was pretty well stocked, compared to others that I have visited over the past few weeks.

I can't believe how much of the last day I've spent wondering whether to go back for the solitary Brandenburg Gate, at £14.99 once gift card taken off! I would but for the fact the box has a scissor/knife cut rectangle missing on the bottom which smacks of someone cutting a security sticker off.

In December I felt like I'd made it past this - I was a guy whole spends 2k on AT-ATs and ISDs. In my head this was big time.

Still narked at TRU Stevenage after I made a special trip from home (I work in Stevenage, but live 30min away) to get my click and collect Imperial Hotels, to find there was a "stock error", receiving the fatal phone call just as I was walking up to the C&C desk. I want to punish them!

I have to say, I was kinda hoping this would be a 2 post thread where someone told me they always restock on the 2nd Friday of January

Was in my local TRU (Derry NI), Picked up a couple of Mos Eisleys and Wall-Es with my GCs a week ago. Shelves still fairly well stocked, also a load of lego movie sets they must have found out back. Ecto-1 was well stocked too. might need to take a trip in tonight after work and get a few

4 hours ago, LahH001 said:

You can order Ecto-1 directly from SAH.  I was in the Watford Lego store a week ago and they had a whole stack of them on the shelves. No one should be paying 33% over MRSP for this.

I'm after Ecto's from TRU so I can use the £20 vouchers, I'm fully aware that TLG has stock

4 hours ago, TheGallows said:

None that Ive seen, and i'm not sure it will be back @TRU.

I'm hoping 3rd time lucky,

Have you checked Portsmouth, thats where im heading tonight?

 

I'll phone ahead and tell them there's a guy coming over from Southampton looking for Ecto-1's, I'm sure you'll get a warm welcome from the Pompey lads 

1 hour ago, Crustybeaver said:

I'll phone ahead and tell them there's a guy coming over from Southampton looking for Ecto-1's, I'm sure you'll get a warm welcome from the Pompey lads 

Haha

Talk about weird, so hit up several Smyths, and the Manchester/Preston TRU's, and they had some random as hell sets available. Manchester had several Hobbit Lake town chases ( I would of bought them but of course they we're full price, good old TRU,) and a bloody Olivia's house which was so beat up it looked like the staff had been playing football with it outback, just for giggles I asked for a price check on it and it was still full price.

Preston had a few Ecto 1's hidden behind some Wall E's so grabbed them with my discount cards, but that was basically it, both stores we're pretty well stocked up still, but nothing really exceptional..

Smyths had really nothing, but came across two Pet shops at £100 so thought why not pick up some more. But the 3 stores I went to did have loads of Mixels series 5 at £1.49 ( Bury Smyths basically had them everywhere I think I picked up over 100 just here, ) so I think I ended up with around 200 of them, I love Mixels easy to pack, easy to store and even easier money.

I was in Tonbridge TRU today and there wasn't a great deal of Lego there. They had Ecto1's but I passed on them for X-Men vs the Sentinel for £35 with my voucher. I'm hoping this one might pick up a bit when the new film is released.

I have used all my TRU gift cards now buying Cantina's & AT-DPs. Don't rely on the TRU online stock checkers as they are very rarely correct. I'm always finding sets that show up as out of stock when I visit the store and the items that are "in stock" are not.

Check out Sainburys if you are nearby as they have a few good deals on. A few had been snapped up but General Grievous for £22.49 (25% off) and Ezra's Speeder for £13.33 (33% off) are respectable buy-ins that I couldn't say no to.

On 1/6/2016 at 8:29 AM, TheGallows said:

Ive cut and paste this from another thread to save me typing it again, but this is what I've heard. Please take it with a pinch of salt, as managers of tru dont always know whats going on in my experience.

"So I hit TRU (southampton) this morning haven't really had a chance to over xmas. Firstly the Lego shelves were literally halve empty. They had a Nijago set covering nearly the entire star wars section, most of the other Lego shelves had been filled with large remote controlled cars. Spoke to the manager and he said they weren't expecting another Lego delivery untill feb....

....Spoke with the assistant manager @ Poole and he said they weren't expecting another Lego delivery until the end of Jan, so the same story as my local.

Might be worth using them sooner than later mate, the pickings are already slim at my two nearest, and it dosn't look like they are getting more until after 16th jan at least, when the GC finishes.

So Ive used over half on mine now between the two stores and bought

x6 Ant Man Final Battle @£10ea

x4 Wall-E @£20ea

x2 Knowhere Escape Mission @£10ea (got them to price match amazon)

x1 75053 The Ghost @£50

x1 SOH £200

 

Gonna hit one more store this week that I haven't checked yet and try to get some ectos..

You did very well to the get Ant-Man sets at £10 each!  Was that a price match? I went to my local TRU today, and they had a large amount of this set. I had picked up a few locally for £16 each (cheapest i could find) so i took 10 sets to the till and asked for a price match. I have never encountered such rude staff in all the time I have been buying Lego. They flat out refused to even sell me the sets at first, then after about 5 mins arguing, the manager sad she would in fact sell them...but at RRP!!! I was so annoyed, and the whole thing was so embarrassing. She said i needed to have more than just my receipt as proof, which is rubbish, as a receipt has been fine in the past. So i took the 10 at RRP, and on my way home, found another shop selling at £15. So i took a picture, and went back to TRU, with the picture, phone number and receipt, and the manager flat out refused again, saying it was at her discretion and that she believed i was a reseller! I should have suggested a career in the police force beckons! Anyway, i just returned the sets, to prove a point more than anything. I will be calling TRU head office in the morning, but wondered if any other members had ever encountered such shocking staff!

Well, we're down to one barely full shelf in my local TRU, of the 4 they have available. We're talking probably 100-150ft of shelf length, by the way, not literally 1 shelf.

No sign of anything new coming in. Down to 1 £20 gift card left. Buying CMFs 9 at a time

One thing I did notice on this trip is that it's not just Lego shelves that are empty. Massive gaps everywhere in the store. Post xmas, I guess, but still...

Chinese new starts Feb 8th, so production will be low for 3 weeks.

I don’t know how Lego distribute product from China to the EU/US markets or how much Czech product stays in the EU, but assuming there isn’t a major restock in the new couple of weeks, I can see the shortages running until the end of Feb.  

My local John Lewis got a full delivery yesterday, I spoke to the girl putting it out. TRU is still nearly empty