Well, finally found some time to get back to PM (and here!) after endless months of hectic work and family commitments (then again, my 2 boys have been switching back and forth between PM
Lego this year and have been dragging me along, somewhat).
At any rate I drove up with the boys to the local toy speciality store (full-line, carries entire Add Ons, but main business is online, with a B&M location to satisfy dealer requirements from various brands (he's also full-line Brio, Papo, Schleich, Bruder, Calico, Ryan's Room, and a boat load of other brands)) to check out the sale they were having - quite a surprise as their in-stock PM items are down ~90% from 9 months ago! Shop seems to have taken quite a hit with the recent US/global financial situation; owner insist he's still very much into continuing the business though. Now when I inquired about the absence of PM stuff, the obvious issue of extending credit was one of the reasons - the interesting comment he made was than PM USA
could not fulfill almost all of his last order (about $8K iirc, hence he dropped the order) as PM USA
themselves did not have enough credit line to get stuff over here from EU! I suppose I could just take it with a heap of salt
On a brighter note, a much closer local store (actually an independent office supply store with large classroom/home-school section) decided to venture into the toy biz and brought in quite a bit of PM stuff about 4 months ago.
How about us? This year it's been a time of accumulating more Steck parts and expanding the city scape - and finally getting the 'new' RC train lines (there's a RCE w/center cargo section and large train station under the Christmas tree this year, unbeknown to the kids
)
