First, for some reason this is blocked at work;
http://guide.lugnet.com
For the following reason;
our request was denied because of its content categorization: "Sports/Recreation;For Kids"

I have the following sets sitting on my work desk in front of me now;
Knight, Street sweeper, Street chef/vendor, a front loader (7630) and a technic bulldozer.
Plus a 'fake lego' wizard. He stays as getting his set was the trigger for getting the rest of the sets :D

Many Spaghetties...

The Creator sets are particularly worth a look, I think. In the 2009 lineup there's this aeroplane set, this car set and this bike set that all list for $US20 or less; this $US50-list fire truck has tons of general-purpose pieces.

(The Peeron Advanced Search is great for this sort of investigation. Here, for instance, is a list of all 2008-or-later sets with a list price of $US15 or lower.)

Actually finding a good range of Lego in department stores is easier said than done, but Lego's "Shop At Home" online store ought to have most, if not all, of the stuff that's available from any retail outlet in your country, plus special offers and "exclusives". Shop At Home's not a good deal here in Australia - the prices are rather inflated, and delivery is really expensive, presumably because it's all coming from overseas - but it seems to be very popular in the States, where I presume they don't charge you $25 to deliver a $15 set.

My nieces and nephews are now getting to the age where they can play with regular sized Lego without eating it, so I've being giving it to them at every opportunity (guess what they're getting for Christmas?) I've been giving them the tubs so far so they'll have a decent base before getting the more specialised sets.

My main concern is that there doesn't seem to be anything like the range of small to medium sets that I seem to remember. Most of what I see in the shops are large sets (mostly Star Wars ones) with only a small numbers of medium and smaller sets.

My second concern is that they'll find MY Lego, which I tell myself I'm hanging onto for when I have children. I really need to bring it back from my mum's place, although Lugnet has got me thinking that it would be cool to recreate those sets for which I lost the instructions over twenty years ago...

I had most of the sets, but my favorites were the 6898 Ice-Sat V and the 6973 Deep Freeze Defender.

No oddball special parts, just your good old-style creative use of standard pieces. The Deep Freeze Defender in particular has a bunch of cool features: Apart from being a totally awesome spaceship, it has a big rocket with a satellite attached in the the middle part of the front of the ship which opens up into a launch ramp. The rear part with the sliding 'garage' door holds the tiny scooter-like spaceship which has its own little launch ramp that deploys when you open the compartment.

All of this is awesome enough in itself, but it's got one more trick up its sleeve: It splits into four parts! The two cockpits and the front and back halves of the ship disconnect and reconnect as two separate, smaller spaceships! That feature alone provided me with heaps of inspiration for home-built Voltron-style constructions.

Also, transparent day-glo orange skis and chainsaws are awesome.

Sounds like set 358 - Rocket Base. It came out in 1973, well before the 'real' space age of Lego.

Popup - I love you!!! Yes yes yes, that's the one. Amazing how the picture brings it back to life. All that stuck in my mind was the rocket itself and the fact that it had a launch tower. The photo brings back the FOUR colours of round peg-things. Awesome. And as well as the black and white curvy bits for the rocket there are the 4 yellow curvy bits too (in the photo they are the splodge at the bottom of the tower)

But, finest of all, the two aerials!! On the tower and the van (about which I had forgotten) Utterly wrong and ridiculous looking. They clearly came out of the Urban Housing Model 123 set, and look like they should pick up Coronation Street just fine, 405-line, VHF. :-)

Thanks!