Subject:
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tour of the northern Brisbane toy shops
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au
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Date:
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Mon, 3 Apr 2000 00:52:27 GMT
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I left my cosy orbit of the outer western suburbs and went on a voyage
of discovery and exploration into the northern suburbs of Brisbane. Armed
only with a Yellow Pages (to find them), a credit card (to buy them),
and a Holden Commodore (to carry them all home), I visited toyshops
in the Toowong, Aspley, and Toombul areas on a mission to locate and
purchase large sets: robotics, technics, model team, and space/star wars.
Mission Report:
K-Mart (Toowong and Toombul)
No robotics, no large technics, only 5561 Big Foot in Model Team,
large selection of star wars.
Currently having a clearance sale, with some big reductions on
some items, little reductions on some items, and no reduction
on others. No discernable pattern in the discounts. Some discounted
prices:
5561 Big Foot model team $59 (no sign of $49 prices reported by
someone the other day)
As I said in a previous message, this is a good set even
at the higher price I paid for it.
7171 Mos Espa Podrace $114 (I saw this elsewhere for over $200)
Personally I thought the Podrace set was overpriced even
at $114 as there didn't seem to be that many pieces in
the set. But I now see that Lugnet says there are 894
pieces so perhaps it's better value than I thought.
7161 Gungan Submarine $69 [I've seen it over $100 previously]
The gungan submarine is a fun set, but I don't think it's
worth $100 for 375 pieces (I think Star Wars Episode
1 has an extra "hype" markup). This price $69 seems
more reasonable.
6969 Insectoids Celestial Stinger $80
Not to my taste, too many specialised parts in this series.
8257 Technic Cyber strikers $60
Not to my taste, but there are 367 pieces and many of them
are those newer rounded Technics beams (is there a better
name for them to distinguish them from the older Technics
bricks-with-holes style of beams?)
6456 Mission Control $60 [see warning below]
I'm sure I remember seeing Mission Control, but my notes
just say "6455 $60" and 6455 is Space Simulation Station.
If I really did see 6456 Mission Control (478 pieces),
then $60 is probably a good price. If I saw 6455 Space
Simulation Station (240 pieces), then $60 probably
*isn't* such a good price. Please double-check if you
are interested in this item.
The clearance signs did not indicate the original price, so I'm
not sure how big a discount these prices actually are. I find that
doubling the MSRP price quoted on LUGnet in US$ tends to give me
a pretty accurate AU$ price for a non-discounted item. On that basis,
the above are all discounted between 20-40% except for 5561 Big Foot
which is more like a 60% discount.
Note. Coles/Myer shareholders will also get their usual discount
off the clearance prices.
David Jones (Toowong and Toombul)
Not worth bothering. Very limited selection and high prices. I
was told the Queen Street store has a better range (which it
does, see my previous posting). The only item of interest was
a single 8002 Destroyer Droid priced at an amazingly low $43.
I thought my luck was out when the cash register scanned the
barcode and said the price was $102, but the sales assistant said
I was entitled to buy it at $43 if I wanted to. So again,
top marks to DJs for the customer service (for those who can
afford to shop there in the first place). However, the regular
price of $102 can easily be bettered elsewhere (e.g. Mr Toys
Toyworld at Queen Street).
Mr Toys Toyworld (Aspley, Toombul)
Despite not being listed in their current specials catalogue,
observation suggests that the chain *is* clearing the Space UFO
series, although there isn't much on shelf:
6975 Alien Avenger $80 (down from $131) at Aspley, but better still
6975 Alien Avenger $60 (down from $131) at Toombul -- 2 on shelf
Apart from this, the range at these stores was not as good as
the store in the Myer Centre, Queen Street. The Aspley store had
a pretty poor collection of Lego in general, while Toombul had
a reasonable selection of Lego, although not much in my areas
of interest.
Pick-n-Pay Hypermarket (Aspley)
They do not stock Lego. Aghast, I stumbled from the store into
the coffee shop outside (BB's Bakehouse?) which turned out to
have friendly aliens serving good coffee and toasted foccacia at
low prices. So I restocked with vital nutrients in preparation
for the short walk around the corner to ...
Toys'R'Us (at the Pick-n-Pay Hypermarket, Aspley)
What a wonderful range of Lego! I think this is the best
range I have seen. I think it is better than the Toys R Us at
Indooroopilly (now closed). There was robotics (as always,
in the electronics section) with Droid Discovery and two of
the RIS expansion sets on shelf; no Robotic Invention System
(sold out but more expected).
In the main Lego area on the back wall, there were large Technics
sets including 8448 Super Car Mark 2, 8446 Monster Crane Truck,
8432 Turbo Command, and many others.
Also in the main Lego area were Cybermaster, Model Team, and
what seemed to be a complete collection of all the Star Wars sets
(although most places have a good range of these).
I think I saw most items in the 2000 catalogue. The exceptions that
I recall were 8450 Cybermaster Mission expansion set and the RIS
Exploration Mars expansion set; I've never seen these in any store
-- any sightings elsewhere?
The downside of this great range was the lack of discounts.
Everything seemed to be full price.
If my credit card ever recovers :-) I will do a similar voyage of
exploration of Brisbane's southern suburbs. Watch this space.
Disclaimer. I am a small shareholder of Coles Myer (owner of KMart),
but otherwise have no financial interest in any of the above stores.
I did write more about the discounted prices at KMart, but only because
they seemed to have more discounted items.
Kerry
=============================================================================
Dr Kerry Raymond, Distinguished Research Fellow E-mail: kerry@dstc.edu.au
CRC for Enterprise Distributed Systems Technology Phone: +61 7 3365 4310
University of Queensland 4072 Australia Fax: +61 7 3365 4311
=========================================== WWW: http://www.dstc.edu.au/kerry
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: tour of the northern Brisbane toy shops
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| (...) $ 116 at K-M(Blacktown), $ 59 at Penrith,Chatswood (...) $ 94.90 in Sydney - lots of special pieces lots of unusual colours the racers look very anorexic on the box but are three ascending sizes. (...) $ 59.90 in Sydney(K-M's) or $136 at (...) (24 years ago, 3-Apr-00, to lugnet.loc.au)
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