Time for the yearly onslaught of pictures from the New York Toy Fair! It's 2020 and this first batch of pictures is right-away like the best ones. Well, maybe just the most interesting stories ones. I think this year I'm going to have bigger groups of pictures so we can get through them faster, so enjoy all the TEXT! Haha.
How many times have I taken this same exact picture? This year I forgot to take a generic "New York Toy Fair 2020" sign picture, so we'll just use this lame picture as the establishing shot. Let's go inside and see some stuff!
Okay first a couple of "I rode the train" pictures. My friend still always gets a giggle out of the name "Metuchen". Fun story, a few days ago Paul McCartney was seen just strolling around, and the town went bonkers.
The train is moving fast and you can't really just leave the camera on in case a good photo op comes along, but we did manage to capture this funny little sign over there pointing out "Bub's Spot". Whatever that's all about, it was funny enough to inspire daydreams on the ride up.
There's various graffiti art shows to be seen, we really can't get too many pictures because we're going to need the battery on the camera for the toy fair all day.
Sorry for the train pics, it's a long ride! The first cool thing we notice right on the door is a sign for Ty about saving the koalas in the Australian wildfire disasters. Later we told the Ty person how cool this was and they told us that not even the designers or manufacturers got paid for this, they ALL worked for free to produce these things for the charity.
Games Workshop is a favorite stop. My friend used to paint these miniatures a long time ago, so he still has a soft spot for this hobby. Here's a before-and-after picture. You can be sure the artists they have doing the show pieces are going to be the best ever.
We saw an exhibitor putting together this puzzle and thought it would be fun to get a picture and ask how many she does each show. She said a few each day, and then pointed out that this is a "Family Pieces" puzzle with different-sized pieces for varying skill levels, so the whole family can work together. Notice the big pieces in the dinosaur? The box said Cobble Hill for the plug.
This Taco Dog was soooo cute! The lady at the booth seemed really excited that we were grabbing a picture for our blog. Shout out to Douglas Cuddle Toys! I'm not sure why the camera did the swooshy effect around this photo.
We stopped in our tracks to check out the REAL butterfly garden indoors. What if they get out? They told us that after the show, the butterflies are being given to a local museum, because it's too cold outside to just let them go.
Here's a picture of their sign, so we wouldn't forget who had the real butterflies: Insect Lore. Is anybody else bothered with the term STEM? Not the idea behind it, I mean... yay math,... but something about the term STEM is just uncomfortable somehow.
We yelled "hey!" at this Squishmallow cat and he turned around for a picture. You at a Toy Fair! More on this guy later, we didn't realize at the time that this was going to be a story-relevant picture. The handlers were handling-out free plushies, we got a little piggy with a unicorn horn.
There was a whole film crew surrounding these kids, everybody wearing "Ellen" shirts, so maybe I was in the background of her show??!! Can you imagine what kind of web traffic I could get from an "Ellen bump"? What a silly thought, Where's Minty on the Ellen Degeneres show.
The 1Up arcade-cabinet-in-your-home crew was in the lobby this year, with a subverted-expectations HUGE arcade cabinet! Let's see you put THAT in your house!
Star Trek Cats? Yes please! Minty has a friend who named one of their cats Spock. Live long and prospurr!
Had to get a close-up of the funny Scotty Cat lovingly licking this alcohol bottle. My friend the Star Trek nerd says it would have gotten 1000 bonus Trek points if the liquid in the bottle was green. The line from the episode was: "what is it?" Drunk Scotty pauses, obviously forgot.... "It's green!"
This Caster class Nitocris figure was a show-favorite for my friend who is currently hooked on the mobile phone game Fate: Grand Order. Probably his favorite character due to her special attack and usefulness and has everything to do with her personality and what? He hardly noticed her um... lack of an outfit. Next to her is Rider class Astolfo, he's cool in the anime but we don't have his character in the game yet.
Twizzler plushies?! That's our go-to movie snack, so this thing would be right at home on the couch or maybe sneak a couple of the red stripes into the theatre with us.
Crimson Squad Baroness! The Cobra Crimson Squad Commanders were the twins Tomax and Xamot, so my friend, who is a twin, always has cool points for anything Cobra Crimson Guard-related.
The upper floor of the Javitts Center had a toy photography art display area. Each piece would have been worthy to post and make comments from. It was hard only picking a few. Here's a great example of posing two fully-different toys together. The result is so hilarious!
Cue dramatic music... How is Batman going to win this match? Has his bat-bell been rung? Is he down for the count? Tune in next week. Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!
Origami Uno cards? Birds flying away? That's like... art! I wonder if I should propose a Minty photography gallery?
I don't recall seeing these new benches last year, did I? They have the USB plugs right in them for charging your phones and stuff. It's important to take a break every so often, you don't realize how much walking you are doing all day. I might have also posted a similar comment, I'm too tired to go check. Maybe after a break here for a minute...
I saw this wall-sized marble run drop thing and was like yeah, gotta get a picture of that! Can you find me in this? Keep in mind this is a giant wall, so I'm rather tiny here.
The girls running this booth were rather excited for us to get a good picture, and tried to get some kind of creative action-shot of the marble and/or Minty dropping. We couldn't quite figure it out, but it was a fun couple of minutes trying.
Stopped by the Tenzi booth to say "Hey!" to our friend we see every year. He asked if Minty had been anywhere interesting recently and we had to tell him some stories from the Star Wars Land in Disney.
Another fun photo op in this giant over-sized Batman child car seat. There was a pretty good amount of excitement over posing Minty in the photo ops this year. Sometimes people are just like "Um... okay.... what are you doing with the little pony?" But this year we got a ton of "Oh that is sooo awesome! Yes! Put the pony in our photo op!"
Here's a brilliant idea we saw. Who else knows the trick to play with Lego using a towel on the floor, so you can scoop up the pieces easier? Well this lady had a whole zip-up bag that unfolded. With one quick zip, the whole thing was up and un-spill-able. Quite cool.
The metal coin people were there and this time giving away money! Well, money good in ancient Westeros. We asked if they were considering other properties and they told us they had an idea to do Star Trek coins from like, ancient Klingon and stuff. I helped by telling them that's an amazing idea.
This poor girl was in this.. shower stall thing. We were thinking, can we really get a picture of this? Where's the toy here? We were too embarrassed to ask for a picture, so we kind of snuck one... from behind,... no pun intended. She sure was making everyone smile though.
My friend got up on the stage and put on the purple Troll wig to get another "I was at the Toy Fair" photo moment. Only paused slightly and thought, nah... no lice in the wig probably.
REAL PONY in the lobby! As a pony myself, I for sure had to get a picture of this. As popular as My Little Pony is, the cliche real dream toy of every little girl is a real pony.
The claw machine was there again, on infinite play. We tried for a few minutes to get something but it was more and more obvious that they were all stuck. It looked like it was pulling up slightly but also the weight of the claw would jam it back down. The prizes were close to the wall and the claw just couldn't reach a bunch of them. It seemed like we could eventually wiggle one free, but then it also seemed like they were all just smashed down for good. How long could we keep this up? We've already been here a few minutes. That cat in the front there... Nope. Stuck.
And right about when we were going to give up, the lady at the booth sneaks over and hands us one. It was honestly such a sweet gesture. My friend is such a sap for little moments like this. Are we in a Pixar movie? Way to go, Kellytoy and your awesome Squishmallows. This cat is the same one we stopped for the photo op earlier as it was walking around.
We round the corner of the booth and see they are selling Russ plushies and the tag line "Make someone happy" hits my friend. They sure did make someone happy! Keep it together, man. Just get the photo.
We couldn't figure out how to get a picture of Minty over there in that giant Batman figure box. I guess Minty could just use a normal-sized Batman figure box instead.
There it is! Soak in the awesomeness of the $600, 40,320-piece Ravensburger puzzle! They confessed this was only a placemat, but fully in size with the completed puzzle and the piece lines drawn on. She said that they were recently contacted by someone who finished the puzzle, and it took them two years to do it! Who even has a floor this big to do this?
Here's the swag pile. Highlights include the cat Squishmallow, of course, an Unstable Unicorns lapel pin, the fantasy coin people gave us a prequel-era Game of Thrones coin, Playmobil had a new posable mermaid, no pokemon cards again but they did have paper hats similar to Burger King crowns, I got the Sobble. Games Workshop gave us a free minature and play guide bundle. Oh, and one booth was handing out Bernie Sanders buttons and stickers, which was a funny surprise to have seen at a Toy Fair. The real swag is all the fun pictures we took! Sorry if that sounded lame.
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