If you’re having trouble finding a VAHI, ask your local comic book store if they order from ACD Distributors , which is currently the only group carrying it. One other important note on that is that Wizards Of The Coast does order from ACD, so if one of their storefronts is in your local area, go see if they can help you out. Another distributor will be carrying the VAHI later this year, but the name of that distributor has not been released yet. Finally, there are no current plans to release the VAHI outside of the United States, so if you’re living anywhere else, your three options are to make friends with someone stateside, try to do an overseas order through a store that is carrying it, or sell your house and start bidding on eBay . (Thanks to Thecankankanohi for pointing out the auctions) Oh, and by the way, other than that one instance in mid-February at the Times Square flagship store, Toys”R”Us will not be carrying the VAHI.

Next up is the $1 bump in the price of the TOA. The reason for this is twofold. First, the TOA sets were apparently a lot more popular than LEGO® expected, so they’ve had to step up production on them to meet demand. That meant they had to set up new production lines to produce the parts involved, and they bumped the price in part to help defray those costs. Second, retailers hate having similar items at different price points, so when they increased the price of the TOA, they matched it to the price of the BOHROK. (And while we’re on the subject, Marz Distribution has posted entries for the six TOA NUVA sets, which are listing at the same price as the TOA and BOHROK, and are scheduled for a September release.)

Finally, we get to the discontinuation of the six TURAGA village leaders. Back in late January we announced that they would no longer ship, but we didn’t know why they would cut production on six very popular items, so I asked Sabre. She said that some of the products in the BIONICLE™ line will have limited production runs, like the TURAGA. In other words, if you want to get a specific set, don’t plan to wait a year to buy it.