Are the LEGO F40 and LEGO Mini Cooper Going to Be Retired Soon?

The T. rex tracker also shows up when you put in retired. Like you said maybe a bug but maybe it's real. 

Leaning toward a bug in the system, the Lego friends camp site also shows up and just came out 

That would be quite surprising, unless there was an issue with the license or a renegotiation that LEGo refused to do, what with the constant problems the FIAT group is going through and all of that.

When you search for retired sets on LEGO Shop at Home EU, both the Mini and F40 come up, along with some newly released Technic sets and some other stuff.

I't could be retiring soon, i still have my doubt. This is SAH we are talking about so anything can happen there and I take nothing serious on it and i'm begging to doubt the retired product label now. I think the mention of retirement will cause ether the set being produced more if sell climb from the horde or actually causing the set to retire. The F40 could also be a mini tumbler all over again with many on the shelves and Lego wants the slow seller gone.

I'm always weary of a retiring soon label on anything, if my own investment plan has a item that gets a retiring soon label stuck on it, I them move and not buy anymore of it.

It's a "hard to find" set because it's still an exclusive set to LEGO Shop at Home (here for the least).

It's the same with other sets (ninjago airjitzu temple..). Some sets are exclusive to Lego for 6 months. Then it becomes available in some other retail shops (Toys'r Us, etc). The "hard to find" tag is removed at that moment.

The "retired" category for this one is a mistake, I would say, especially considering some sets released few weeks ago are listed along.

The F40 isn't going anywhere IMO. However, if you want this set to build, I wouldn't wait... 'cause who knows...

In Mini Coopers product page there is drop down menu.

6061191 shows up as retired,
but 6144522 is still available and will be (and will be for a long time, I think).

See the attached picture.

Yup, in Mini´s case it is because the box has retired and F40 is not a bad seller so one assumes there is something in the content description of the item that matches with the search field.

There's a reason for everything. The Mini Cooper has been rumored for retirement for months now. So has the Jurassic Park sets. Technic sets retire early all the time and nobody notices. People pay attention to colors of the "Sold Out," so there could be something to this. I don't see this set as a good seller. But that's just me.

3 hours ago, senteosan said:

In Mini Coopers product page there is drop down menu.

6061191 shows up as retired,
but 6144522 is still available and will be (and will be for a long time, I think).

See the attached picture.

 

Thanks for sharing this page. I originally ran this query against the US site.  This kinds proves all of their country sites (portal) prob pull from the same database / data warehouse and then each portal renders only want should be displayed to people in that country (inventor, tags, language used, etc...). Country Code is prob "primary key" like Customer ID to help drive everything.  

So that box variation which is fully seen on non-US web sites (e.g. Denmark) does impact how the set is categorized in the US.  

Maybe the sets are returning in "retired" searches because of the word "tire"?  Not sure.

Should the F40 go so unexpectedly quick (and I highly doubt LEGO would actually do that, though stranger things have happened), then the specially made Wind Screen that is unique to this set will sky rocket in value!

I think you got it there. Both sets have "tire" in the description text and I think that the search engine probably matches up with words containing 4 or more letter strings.

1 hour ago, valenciaeric said:

I think you got it there. Both sets have "tire" in the description text and I think that the search engine probably matches up with words containing 4 or more letter strings.

If that is the case, why isn't it that the Drag Racer and other titles that have multiple "tire" words in their description listed on that page with retired products (there are a lot of sets with "tire" in the description)

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Drag-Racer-42050

No idea  but it´s SAH, the world´s best web so anything can happen.

Mini has a coherent explanation as the old box version is retired product. I would need a very good explanation to accept that F40 is retiring any time soon as it is a certified best seller and even Lego has raised the price in some countries.

I have seen many new sets show up when searching for "retired".  when i do the search now the entire first page is full of new sets with tire in the description, so...

I will say however that AT-AT (which definitely has no tires) was definitely showing up in the retired search late last year, so its possible there is something to sets that are available showing up in this search.

8 minutes ago, jay4e said:

I have seen many new sets show up when searching for "retired".  when i do the search now the entire first page is full of new sets with tire in the description, so...

I will say however that AT-AT was definitely showing up in the retired search late last year, so its possible there is something to sets that are available showing up in this search.

Yes, this is nothing new.

However, we should not rule out a Mini retirement at the end of the year - it´s a definite possibilty if sales drop off (I see a lot of stock in shops).

FWIW... The Mini Cooper and VW Campers on the shelves at John Lewis (Reading) are now all in tatty boxes which tells me they are either slow sellers (customers pick them up and then plonk back on the shelf with extreme vigour) or there's limited supply and the ones on the shelves are returns. LEGO has caught us with our pants down several times and nothing will surprise me now.

F40, Mini & Camper are currently limit 1 in the UK.

New style boxes or old? Seal codes?

I think at least one car will be done this year but we still need a list of new  exclusives to be able to estimate better what will go out to make room. VW seems to still be a strong seller and F40 is only just a non exclusive.

Unless you have access to the code base from which the search for the word 'retired' is executed, it's pure speculation. Back-end application searches aren't necessarily searching what you're reading on a particular page.... they're checking against whatever fields the design says to check against... and those fields aren't always visible to us the users. The partial word search algorithms are well known .. but how loosely they are applied is up to the company itself.

It's an interesting observation but one hardly deserving of wild ass speculations about partial word matching between 'retired' and 'tires'.

You do know what the fire bike has?

Feeling lucky now

BTW... If I had to decide on which one to invest, it would be the Mini Cooper due to it's better detail and previous great performance of the Beetle. The F40 is too "Toy Like" and could be as disappointing as the 8169 Lambo (only selling for £100 now with similar RRP in real terms). The VW Camper often sells for RRP+ while still being available by the truckload from "every shop in the universe" meaning that this is a no-brainer.

Still, I have to admit that it's rather odd when you search for Retired Product flag, you get a long list with a lot of already retired products, and then a few retiring soon sets, and most strikingly both the F40 and the Mini Cooper:

No idea  but it´s SAH, the world´s best web so anything can happen.

Mini has a coherent explanation as the old box version is retired product. I would need a very good explanation to accept that F40 is retiring any time soon as it is a certified best seller and even Lego has raised the price in some countries.

Certified by who?

Maybe a call to CS would save all this speculation. After all if it's on the webpage they should be able to confirm whether they're retiring the sets or if it's nothing more than a mistake.

15 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

Certified by who?