MAH4546

6 months or less? If the pictures are out there right now, they will be on the net in a matter of days or hours, not months.

If its out there it is out there, LEGO can't do a single thing to you. Anybody mind telling me if on,y Technic has leaked, or other themes too?

They were probably going to be taken home by an employee to build for display. They go on sale August 1.

You are making the false assumption licensing fees are always expensive. A McDonald's themed set probably wouldn't cost a licensing fee whatsoever - companies are often happy to give out their corporate trademarks for secondary use in toys in order to build brand awareness. The "licensing fee" is the advertising generated by having the trademark attached to the set. It is akin to a marketing tie-in, not licensing. Car companies, oil companies and restaurants are notorious for literally giving away the ability to license their trademarks subject to product approval. There is certainly no "licensing fee" that significantly increases the cost of the large Maersk, Volkswagen and Mercedes sets, and there wouldn't be here, either. There is a huge difference between licensing a brand and licensing a character.

I have found them once in a while. If its complete and a figure I need, I just buy it at regular price and save the hassle of feeling packages, it does not bother me that it was previously opened. Otherwise, I leave it.

The Haunted House, which will go on sale September 1, is not a modular.

All consumer goods are cheaper in the United States. This might be a legitimate complaint if LEGO was an anomaly. It's not. Check out how cheap cars are in the U.S., it would blow your mind.

Those cases a widely available at TRU, and now come in black, too.

There are two in Colombia - Bogota and Medellin - with a third opening up in Cali later this year. They are ran under license by a separate company, hence while they are identical to the LEGO store in every other way, they aren't part of the VIP program nor advertised as part of the chain by LEGO itself. http://www.colombia.com/entretenimiento/fotos/sdi40/26123/lego-store-abre-sus-puertas-por-primera-vez-en-colombia http://www.facebook.com/LEGOstorecolombia

All consumer goods are cheaper in the United States, period. We have virtually no import tariffs, cheap fuel, larger economy of scale and sales tax that in some places is 0%. You think the $20-50 price on LEGO is a big deal? A BMW 328i that cost €42,000 in the Netherlands is €28,000 in the United States. And, on top of that, U.S. models come with more standard equipment. We pay €400 for a big screen Sony LCD, €160 for an iPhone and €37,000 for a Porsche Boxter or Cayenne. Goods are cheap here.

That's for handling returns. You can't return one item and just keep the free stuff for free. The free items are given a value, and that value is not returned to you if you make a return of the other items in the order.

Where are you located that you saw them?

They are listed for the price. That's not how much they actually sell for. $200-350 is a good, abeit wide, range of what it would realisticly sell for.

It comes with four cars - the beige van, yellow and blue cars and the orange tow truck.

Next year I suspect we will see a relaunched airport collection.

Found some at Target and Wal-Mart. At Target, the items rang up on the scanners but they wouldn't let me buy them. At Wal-Mart, the items rang up as "invalid" on the scanners, but they did let me buy them. Go figure. Overall I'm liking the theme.

I was turned off at first when I found out the sets wouldn't use regular minifigures, but more and more I'm starting to really like them. With the leaked images we know 20 of the sets, while LEGO has announced 23. On page 36 of the January U.S. S@H catalog is a stylized map of Heartlake City that features some generic, more blurred structures and some others that are more defined, including drawings of the leaked sets. So I think it might show us the three sets we don't have images of. One very detailed structure is a white residential house with purple roof and a large patio. Another is a bay front structure that reminds of me of an art deco-inspired hospital and the third I can't make out as well what it could be, but is shown in the "commercial district" of the map and has a large red sloped roof.

The controversy isn't as big as one might be led to believe. It's being largely done by a feminist organization that fights against female stereotypes in consumer products and has asked its members/followers to spam LEGO. I think this range has great potential. I would have preferred if it were "minifig scale" but nonetheless I look forward to picking up a few of the sets.

I am surprised by so much negative feedback, I love the mining sets! Amazing! A great twist on construction sets. The flagship mine set just has so much going on - a tunnel drilling machine, a crane, a dump truck semi and even a narrow gauge mine train! And the giant dump truck? Brick built bucket! This is such a nice departure from the previous attempt with one giant, hideous piece. The hospital is nice, but I agree it's more a doctor's clinic. A true hospital would have been cooler, but, who knows what else is in store? There is definitely a set or two that we don't know about. Maybe follow the Duplo theme and gives us a doctor's clinc and a hospital? This is probably a retailer catalog leak, and retail catalogs don't have store exclusive sets,no maybe, for example, a large hospital set might be a store exclusive.

No, one won't. No pictures this set are publicly available yet.

Little doubt in my mind he is a drop-shipper. You'll get your items, but drop-shipped from LEGO. You pay him with Paypal. He collects the cash, then orders the item(s) with a stolen credit card from shop.lego.com.

Everything is cheaper in America. It's the biggest consumer market in the world, so fixed costs are pared over a wider population base. Plus, it's a low tax country. If one thinks the price differences in LEGO is bad, I suggest you don't look up how much cheaper a car is in America, even one imported from Europe.

Nowhere is the sales tax 12%. There is 0% national sales tax. Most states have a state sales tax, but that is never higher than 9.6% and rarely above 5%. Then some cities/counties add a sales tax, too. The highest total (state+county+city) sales tax is 11.5% in a small number of cities in Illinois. In only two other places does it exceed 10%. Everything consumer goods-related is cheaper in America - from a Matchbox toy car to a LEGO set to an LCD TV to a BMW. This isnt a LEGO-only thing and will likely never change. And I wouldn't buy into that "market creation" PR garbage that LEGO might spew. LEGO is the third largest toy seller in the U.S. after Mattel and Hasbro. It has no problem selling product. The reality is that America has awesome economies of scale, a lot less regulation than elsewhere, low taxes and cheap transportation costs that make distributing and selling goods incredibly affordable. It's cheaper to hire workers, cheaper to advertise product, cheaper to transport product, etc., etc., and that cost savings is passed onto the consumer. I also find dubious any claim that Germany is the largest market for LEGO. It certainly has been in the past, but I doubt that is still the case, at least not in volume. I couldn't find anything about this in the most recent annual report.

No, it's not the the third or fourth. It is never below the second largest market, often neck-and-neck with Germany. And that's based on dollar sales - so given how dirt cheap LEGO is in the States, it's no secret where the most LEGO sets are sold. US prices are low because America is a dirt cheap place to distribute product. It has low taxes and awesome economics of scale. Think the price difference between LEGO in Germany and the U.S. is bad? You don't want to know how little we pay for a German-imported BMW 5-Series.

Here are some basic, non-professional pictures taken with my iPhone. http://s1092.photobucket.com/albums/i416/mah4546/