The heat sinks on my LEDs get pretty hot too. It's a lie that LEDs don't give off heat. True that they don't give off as much as CFL of incandescent, but they still do.
Not really. What they meant by giving off heat is radiant heat. LEDs don't radiate much compared to incandescent or halogen. The heat you feels when touching the lamps themselves is from internal resistance in the electrical circuits. Same thing as the processor in your computer get hot when in use needing a huge heatsink/fan to cool it.
Yes, LEDs produce what is called "conductive heat". They may product no IR rays, but they can get quite hot on the heat sinks, depending on the model. BTW these LOA retrofit lamps use CREE emitters if I recall correctly.
If you compare the LED lamps with incandescent/halogen ones. Put your hand under the light beam of both. The LED one you won't feel the heat from it but will feel it on the other lamp. That's the kind of heat the companies say LEDs won't produce.
Lamps aren't meant to be touched much when they're in use anyway so they (companies) didn't bother mentioning the hot heatsink.
Built my own LED lamp today, using a 1W Stanley LED, and am using a old LGA775 heatsink ( without the fan) for a heatsink. Ran it for around an hour, and it is not even warm, the heatsink is around ambient with the die at just around 40C. Most of the LED lamps suffer from poor heatsinking of the die and the electronics.
Lamps aren't meant to be touched much when they're in use anyway so they (companies) didn't bother mentioning the hot heatsink.