Hamleys Cardiff

[Nigel]

Cardiff's Hamleys opened yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they're not overpriced. As far as I could see, everything was at RRP, or at least rounded up the penny to the whole pound, ie £13 for a Deluxe rather than £12.99. They had a good selection of Transformers, with a full range of Prime and Bot Shots assortments; no Kre-O, though, unless it was over in the construction section and I didn't notice. (The Lego range was large too, even including some of the big collector-aimed kits like the space shuttle and town houses.) The Deluxe, at least, were the latest releases, with Kup, Rumble, Dead End, Airachnid and the black/yellow Bumblebee repaint. I think the Bot Shots were the latest, too, but I haven't been paying close attention to them.

The shop is a good size, about twice the size of The Entertainer. The shopfitters messed up, though; the hooks are too wide for the products and the cards are all forced on. Fans of MOC will be disappointed.

[kayevcee]

Sounds like a nice place. I wonder how the Glasgow branch is doing. They were generally at RRP on everything but a few items were a pound or two over. It certainly didn't hurt Toys'r'us' business. Smyths on the other hand...

EDIT: Now that I think about it, it seems odd that Hamleys has decided to branch out with a big newcomer like Smyths on the warpath. Maybe they believe they are aiming at sufficiently different markets.

-Nick

[The Doctor]

I have visited the Glasgow Hamleys exactly twice and found it to be stupidly overpriced over RRP's and so no purchases were made. The layout was also terribly confusing.

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

Hamleys did have several other stores in the mid 80s Kingston had one as did Bath. Both long gone.

there was an outlet Hamleys in the outlet village in Swindon stocking remaindered items at above retail price. That didn't last long.