I randomly stumbled onto this. I went because an employee had told me one of their trucks hadn't arrived that day and so would be arriving the next morning, hopefully with some s3. The event was only for 2 hours and I just happened to show up right when it was starting. No s3, but this made up for it completely.

They had the poly bag and ninjago headbands as giveaways and a demonstration of the ninjago game. It seems to involve minifigs on spinners and the object is to knock off the other persons figure. Cards are involved somehow. I didn't have time to stick around to watch the demonstration and she hadn't even gotten set up yet. She asked me if I wanted to build one of the sets (uh...yes!).

The polybag is very cool. Just a few pieces, but you get a nice sword and 2 pearl gold dots. The ninjago logo on the back of the plate is a sticker.

In addition to this TRU had star wars characters in costumes with helmet mikes and holiday hats putting on a show and entertaining people, which was also really cool.

I am not trying to promote my ebay auction that I have available for USA buyers, but if you want to see a pic of the new NINJAGO set 2257 I was able to get my hands on two of them. I do not plan on collecting this series so I am selling them. But if you want to see a pic of the set, do a search on ebay for LEGO 2257 and you can see a pic of the front and back of the set. I will also try to email the pics to brickset later today so he can post them on the site. They are not on sale yet in USA, my connection states they should be on sale sometime next month.

^do you know how much it willl be, asuming it is not $40-50

here is a link that i found for the promo movie in the mminifigure usb:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slayerdread-photos/5250490762/

I got the same thing yesterday! I got a head band, a eye sticker, and the cool polybag. The polybag doesn't have a set number, but it has 2 numbers on the back. It has a new printed piece, too.
And about ninjago, the Lego part looks cool, but the trading cards don't.

I was able to nab a pre-release Bonezai for handing out some polybags to kids..... :D

^ could you post pictures?

I wanted to go but couldn't. Oh well. Also, eBay has some of the workers selling the boxes they were using for the shows. I saw two last night.

i found some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41215338 @N04/5253856601/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41215338 @N04/5254467802/

The rep. who did our event was an hour late, didn't know anything about the game and was so out of it another parent was handing out the polybags, headbands and stickers. There was a kid there showing everyone how to do the game. He was not her son, he was the son of someone we know. Worst event ever!!!

My husband and son went to the event and were able to get a couple of the polybags and headbands. The rep was nice enough to slip my husband a 2257 pack once she saw how excited my son was about the figures. That'll be a great surprise Christmas gift!

The arena pack that has one skeleton and one blue ninja in it is $21 an the single ninja packs are $10 or so we were told at the event yesterday.

I agree it was horribly run! They didn't know how it worked, didn't open up enough of their packages of ninjas for the number of kids around the table to take turns trying it. At one TRU it was on a table at the back of the store - no good there no one stopped by! And no one could explain how the game started (which cards people chose limits etc)

The skeletons do not have feet, they have black boot like ends to their legs so they connect to the base as firmly as a minifigure does.

I'm amazed this event wasn't advertised. I recieved nothing from TRU about it.

@mommylego- Was it free, or did you have to pay?
@cara- My friend said that they advertized it at the Madison, WI TRU, so it was advertized in at least one place.

The thing was free, and they had ads in stores for weeks.

I think the event was rather lame, what is the point of showing sets to children but telling them they can't get the sets for Christmas? They have to wait a month?

My wife and two boys went to the local event at TRU. We each got polybag sword holders, large sticker 3 3/8 x 8 inch sticker, and Lego Ninjago headbands. The contents are a little bit of nothing, 11 pieces. Feeling the base through the bag led me to believe the Ninjago wording on the base was a sticker, not print.

For what it is worth the sword holder Poly bag look phenomenal, and is a must-have for the lego completest. Rationalizing a ebayvalue=kid-fun level; I promptly put the four on ebay. I don't really care what they bring, i just want convert that amount (and collectively 44 pieces of legos) over to decent sized set for my kids, maybe something from the Pharoahs Quest line.

The head band is high quality printed graphics on a 100% polyester material, Kid sized of course, even the large sticker is printed on quality stock.

To my surprise, both my kids loved the demo of spinning tops, one cried when we left the table.

@Pepper - The rep gave the set to my husband for free. They weren't selling any of the sets in the store yet.

That "sword on a stand" is a katana, a Samurai sword. A little piece of information for those of you who did not know. :)

@mommylego- Thanks!

I went there. The free sword holder is nice for being free and there was plenty of s3's but at $3.99! That's ridiculous! Never buying CM's from TRU again til they go down to at least $3, but $2 would be much nicer. I also found the dots to be easy to read, but didn't have the code sheet on me.

I went to the event as well. It was OK, no real "demonstration" and only one other person was there. I was very disappointed that the tile had a sticker, not printing. I'll soon post scans of all the packages and brochures as part of a review to MOCpages, but right now, I can't seem to access the site, so it'll probably have to be later today.

I was impressed by the detail and new parts in the fig packs, but they were low quailty plastic and for $10, in my opinion, not worth it.

I went too. The guy there would not give me anything till I told him how big a fan of Lego I was.

There were stickers? I didn't see them and she didn't offer, but she was nice enough to give me the extra polybags and headbands so that's ok I guess.

slightly OT: Could you allow us to vote bricklist up and down? I think that if a kid is able to make an overly negative and childish "ADJECTIVE SETS" bricklist and thus make the adjective visible in the main pages of all of the sets in the bricklist, then he should be accountable if a lot of people don't agree and get a negative bricklist score in exchange...

Ack. We were at TRU but didn't know a thing about any event. GRR. :-( The boys already got their "eye" stickers from the LEGO store. Given how they are both heavily into Beyblades these days Ninjago sounds like a great fusion of two passions, LEGO and BB.

We didn't get any thing from TRU in our bags.

In Appleton it was hidden in a back corner of Babies-R-Us. One employee told me it was cancelled, due to the lego rep not showing up, but I saw the table & I wandered over and .........wow !

No one was even looking at the sets ... I grabbed 4 or 5, for friends that couldn't make it due to the weather.

They had a few sealed sets:
- single figures $9.99
- 2 packs 19.99

A little pricey in my opinion, but no-one was there showing how the game as played.

I wish they had more traditional building sets instead of trying to make it a game. We have been asking for Ninja's to return, but this wasn't what I was looking for.

@ vexorian -- are you referring to BrickLists like this one? http://www.brickset.com/brickLists/?3254

The list creator doesn't seem to have much info on the new theme; NinjaGO means Ninja 5 -- since "five" is "GO" in Japanese.
The set called "Spinjitzu Training Center" [2504] seems to be a fun play-on-word for the Japanese martial arts form "Jiujitsu" and the character called "Bonezai" seems to be a fun take on Banzai (possibly a reference to the movie "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension").

It is unfortunate some fans choose to review a set before they own it or understand its story. Fans are certainly entitled to their opinions and Brickset is gracious enough to host :-)

Even if this theme doesn't appeal to some (for it not being pure "classic" Ninja or other reasons) it's hard to fault the LEGO designers -- because they have melded an old genre into a new theme with fresh, progressive aspects! If ya don't like the spinners, then don't spin ;-)

As for the Toys"R"Us event -- it was advertised in the December 8th flyer e-mailed out to customers/subscribers. They send out about 3 a day lately, so it's easy to overlook some specials tacked onto the sales announcements.

^I thought that you were supposed to say Ninja GO! when you launched your top. Maybe it's a double meaning.
When Brickset had the survey a month or two ago I suggested a report Bricklist button. It would surely come in handy.

From what we've been told by LEGO, 'ninjago' is supposed to be pronounced as 'nin-JARgo' rather than as 'NINja-go'

TRU had the 2 packs out but when I brought it to the counter to pay for it, the set said it wasn't suppose to out until January. The upside, though, is that I have a complete set of Series 3 with 2 doubles, the baseball player and Racecar Driver. Oh and again no Harry Potter sets out either, except quidditch, which doesn't do anything for me.

big news about ninjago, star wars, hero factory from canadian tru:
they left the ontario warehouse on the 8 of december, and should be in calgary sometime in the next two weeks!
this news also means that tru's ontario should have them now...
also series three minifigs will ship from ontario on the 18 on december...

@bluemoose: if it is supposed to be pronounced nin-jar-go then why do the people in the commercial/ad say ninja go? I have also heard Lego store employees pronounce it at nin jago. Go figure?!

How about we just call it ninja 2011 or something like that so we know everybody's not talking about the original ninja theme and there's no disagreements on the pronunciation. I wish those single ninja packs were only like $4 (more resonable than s3 CM's from TRU), more people would be willing to pay around that much for some nice weapons and ninjas compared to an overpriced single-figure so-called "set."

I have a feeling this is probably what they'll be doing at the LEGO Store in January.
I already got some NinjaGO stickers last week at my local shop - http://www.flickr.com/photos/51289111 @N05/5244291055/

...and January 13 and 14th they'll be giving out free Headbands (but ya' gotta' buy $35.00 worth) plus they're having 'Spinjitzu Training' for the kids Jan. 24 to Feb. 6th'...and a LEGO Club NinjaGO meeting Jan. 22nd. So I think they'll have all these giveaways and stuff at the local LEGO Store.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51289111 @N05/5242766016/in/photostream/

@legoDad42: It seems the headband is a different item. The one at TRU was black, while the one given away with a $35 purchase seems to be a shade of red. I think you're right about the stickers though, those were the ones given out at TRU's event.

@UnoBrick...thx man. Cool that they're different exclusive giveaways. Maybe at the LEGO Store there will be something even different during their NinjaGO event.

I wish there was a way to report bad reps. It seems this is an all to common practice.

Email LEGO & let them know; most of these 'reps' will have been agency staff rather than LEGO's own employees. LEGO would like to know if they did a bad job ... I'd urge anyone who felt let down to use this contact form - http://service.lego.com/en-US/Contactus/Email.aspx

I just got a nasty feeling the Ninjago figs (For the fig, weapon, and card packs) are made in China. Can someone that went tell me if they were so I stop worrying? I've seen some pics of the event and saw the figs being there.

@Exus: Yup, the fig packs are the Made in China quality, probably not the 1x2 bricks and 2x2 plates, put the figs are. I didn't take the time to look on the inside of the arm, but the top of the leg has that little hollowed out section with the mold mark. This also leaves me worrying if this quality plastic is to appear in the sets as well.