LEGO TMNT Released
 

For those curious, I spotted them at the Toys "R" Us by the King of Prussia Mall.

It's officially the year of the turtle.

Sweet.

I think this heralds my grand return to collecting Legos. Have a boatload of Doctor Who CB coming in from the UK sometime this week or next, and Star Trek kreos are coming out next year, and now Lego TMNT is out.

Need to see if I can get ahold of the main characters from the Star Wars line, so AT LAST WE CAN HAVE COMPATIBLE SW, TREK, AND DOCTOR WHO!!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
...and have them all buggered by turtles and brains in silly vehicles!

...yes, I am in an odd mood today, why do you ask?

these were released on sunday and tru has already decided to boost the price even higher than normal. i wonder if there is some type of law for price gauging at a store?

Oh god, my son is going to flip.... O_o

On a side note for those of my fellow Arkers who are also dad's, don't you just want to "Hulk Out" when you step on stray lego pieces that your kids leave lying around?...I've been doing that a lot recently....

TRU does not sell the volume or the variety of product that Walmart does in order to make the prices lower. They have to have a higher price to turn a profit.
Beyond that, Walmart intentionally pushes their prices too low, in order to undercut Target, TRU, and others.
So it's not really so much that TRU is "price gouging" as you say, it's that Walmart is price fixing, simularly to what china does to undercut competition. (There was a big thing within the last few years of china flooding the US market in I think Ohio, with extremely cheap tires that the US companies could not compete with, and that ended up becoming a near international incident that the president had to step in.)

So the reality is, Walmart's undercut prices are technically more morally bankrupt than TRU selling them around MSRP.

These are pretty cool. I wouldn't mind getting a set of the turtles mini figures.

no not selling things for a little more but for an insane amount more. here's what happened to me and you weigh in. i read that tru had the tmnt legos in and so i went to get some for my son. checked the lego site and saw the prices before hand since i know that tru over prices things. saw the two smaller sets and thought why not. mikey/krang set was sku priced at $14.99 (lego site $12.99) and the shredder set sku at $27.99 (lego site $24.99). now mind you i went on sunday when they were released at tru. when i went to ring out the mikey set was now $17.99 and the shredder set was $34.99! this is not the only thing they did this to. mp prime was $99.99 and is now $129.99. tmnt sewer set was $109.99 and is now $139.99. tru also has this crazy idea that when they put legos on sale they have to raise the price when they do...

i seen them at my toysrus. i was very suprised, i didnt think they were coming out till next year

according to lego.com they don't go on sale until dec. 24.

It's just part of TRU's business strategy of differentiation.

Walmart generally has a price and it's set. Then at Christmastime they do drop the prices artificially low.

Target generally keeps their prices at or slightly above Walmart, and dabbles in sales.

ToysRUs really goes after the coupon/sales/gimmicky market. They're all the time running BOGO 50% off, B2G1 free, get a free <Lego something or other> if you spend $X. Or like right now some sets are just flat 50% off. And they have a sale of $25 off $100 of Legos. Buy a Wendy's Kid's Meal and get a coupon for a $10 gift card with $75 purchase. All kinds of promotions. By the time your done, you've probably spent just about as much as if you had just bought them at full Walmart price.

And well, it's capitalism. They have the hot toy. At Christmas time. Competitors don't. Gotta milk it for all it's worth. They do their stockholders a disservice if they don't, right?

The crazy thing is that they usually do raise the prices when things initially come out. But then they forget to drop them. Walmart and Target sell the Avengers Quinjet set for $70. TRU sells it for $85. That's a bit crazy.

At my TRU the smallest Turtles set is 20 dollars. That is just ridiculous. I wont be buying any Legos from there ever again.

ToyAddict makes a lot of good points, so I won't get into much.
But this:

That doesn't dound terribly unreasonable to me, honestly.

That sounds like a screw up somewhere, if it's marked on the shelf as one thing,a nd rings up the other. Either they put the wrong price on the shelves (Which then this *is* an unreasonable price, IMO), or it was in the system wrong. Either way, you should get the shelf price.

I've *never* seen or even heard of either of these items being marked or intended at that lower price. I did briefly see the sewer set on sale for $109. Maybe that's what you saw for that.
At a loss for Prime, though.

i saw stealth shell last night toysrus buffalo ny didnt think it was news didnt take worker seies when they said lego turtles until i walked down the eisle