I too have noticed that some stores in and around my area still sell the retired kits. Not sure where you live charliebrown but I live in a rural area but in every town there's a radio shack and some stores I've found sell lots of zips and mostly have all new stock while other shacks it seems dont sell as many and in my experiences have seen the older kits in those stores.I found the american classics bodies in a store in my area a couple weeks ago. I was at the mall in st.louis last weekend and saw the european imports body kit in a radio shack in the mall. They had the spongebob kit marked down as well as the xmen toolkit so apparently in that area they arent as popular. That's all I can understand. Basically what I'm saying is if you can get your folks to drive you to some different RS's you'll probably find they have different stock than your neighborhood store. If you guys go on a trip or vacation this summer try to hit every RS that you see and you just might find what you're looking for, but dont rule out ebay my friend...sometimes you'll be able to buy things a lot cheaper than you think if you'll keep watching, it might take a while but eventually you'll get a deal of a lifetime on there.
Good luck dude.