(l-r: Poe, H. Eric “Cornboy” Mayse, Joe Amaro, Cornboy’s wife Corinna, and Val “JVS3” Staples)

It’s been over a week now, so I should probably try to wrap up my Toy Fair coverage. We’re getting there!

For this post, I’d like to give you a description of my general experience at Toy Fair. This was my first trip to NYTF, and I thought it might be fun to show you what it’s like.

I live in Boston, so I took the Greyhound Bolt Bus down to Manhattan. It costs less than $20 each way, and there’s wifi on the bus, so it’s a surprisingly quick four hours. I got to NYC around 10am Saturday and went to the Jane Hotel, where I dumped my stuff off before heading to the previously-described Hasbro Collector Day.

A few words about the Jane Hotel. Nestled in Greenwich Village, the Jane is really more of a hostel than a hotel; you do get your own room, but it’s essentially the size of a room in a train car, and you have to share a bathroom, college dorm-style. The bed was about eighteen inches wide, and it was another eighteen inches to the wall, which was covered by a huge mirror. The first night I was there, I was nearly baking thanks to a very, very hot radiator in that tiny room (they moved me to another room for my second night). Also, I’m six feet tall, and I didn’t really fit in the bed.

My first night at the Jane, I came back at 11pm to find the entrance completely blocked by young people dressed to the nines and speaking in multiple languages. Once I got through to the door, I passed the most flamboyantly gay man I had ever met on the stairway. Thumping techno music played until 3am two floors below me. I later found out it was Fashion Week.

My favorite thing about the Jane was the key: it was a metal key magnetized to my specific room, but the chain also held what appeared to be a huge (and I mean 7″ long) door knocker and a long, thin tube of brass. The tube had to be inserted into the wall to complete a circuit and turn on the electricity in the room. It’s a clever way to save energy, but that keychain was comically large and heavy.

Now, all that said, the Jane wasn’t so bad. I paid less than $200 for two nights in my own room in Manhattan, and the waitstaff was very helpful and accommodating, especially when they moved me to another, less hot room. The bathrooms were clean and not crowded. But it did seem a tailored to backpackers, college students, hipsters and aging hippies.

At the Hasbro Collector Day, I met Pixel Dan and Damian Killen of PopCultureNetwork, Rob Base of AlternativeMindz, Val “JVS3” Staples of He-Man.org, Phil Reed of Battlegrip, Kastor of Kastor’s Korner, and Jason Stephens a.k.a. Lemonjuice McGee of MTV Geek. (I also saw David Willis of Shortpacked! taking pics for TFwiki.net, but didn’t introduce myself because I’d never interacted with him, online or otherwise, so it would have been odd.)

After the event, I went back to my hotel room, uploaded my pics and the report, and then met Pixel Dan, Rob, Val, and some other folks at the Hard Rock Cafe. I didn’t get very drunk. Toy stuff was discussed.

Sunday I got to the Javits Center around 11am for Toy Fair proper. There was a Lego event at 7:30am, which Pixel Dan and some others attended, but I had a.) forgotten to look into Lego, and b.) didn’t want to get up that early anyway.

Once at Toy Fair, I just spent some time wandering the aisles. It’s not that different from SDCC, really–there are booths and aisles and exhibitors, and people wander between them. The only major difference is that it’s the retailers (like Toys R Us, Target, etc.) who are the real target of these presentations, and so they were generally given preference over press interviews.

At the EMCE booth I had a great talk with EMCE’s Dr. Mego, a great guy who spent a half hour talking toys with me. I followed that with an interview with Jazwares‘ Director of Product Development, Joe Amaro. Joe is already fairly well known in toy circles for his awesome customizing skills, so it was great to meet him in person and see what Jazwares is working on. I’ve already been impressed with their Sonic figures and their 3 ¾” A-Team movie toys went over well, but I think it’s their upcoming 3 ¾” Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat lines that are going to put them on collectors’ radar permanently. At this stage in their company development, they remind me of Toy Biz in the late 1990s or an early Resaurus–just on the cusp of taking off.

I had a great time talking with Joe, who’s definitely “one of us,” so to speak. In addition to being a fellow lover of toys, he’s also a friendly, funny guy, and hope to hang out with him again in the future.

After Jazwares I spent some time at the NECA booth, and then was off to the Mattel Collector’s event. Mattel had rented out an entire wings of the Javits Center, and the place was set up like a temporary military headquarters. In a space the size of an aircraft hangar, there were countless “rooms” constructed of translucent white tent material–offices. There were offices! At the collector’s event, we were ushered into one particular large section, where we were allowed to take pictures of everything, followed by a presentation by Scott “ToyGuru” Neitlich (there was no slideshow, which I thought was unusual).

After the Mattel event I was off to Bandai, which I’ve covered elsewhere. Finally, I was off to Toy Tokyo to hang out with the Four Horsemen and friends. I got to talk to O-Dawg, the Sixth Horseman, as well as Joe, Val, and other previously-mentioned toy types. The show was very cool, with lots of 200X MOTU prototypes on display, and an entire wall of carded Four Horsemen-sculpted toys, from Harry Potter to MOTU 200X to DCUC to MOTUC to Fantastic Exclusive. (They missed that Maxx Steel figure, though–and there was no McFarlane stuff on display.)

I had planned to stay through Monday, but I was able to cover most of what I wanted to on Sunday, and since Sunday was my wife’s birthday and Monday was Valentine’s Day, I decided to head home early to surprise her.

All in all, I had a lot of fun at NYTF. The best part by far was getting to meet in person all these people I’d been interacting with online for, in some cases, years (I hadn’t even seen the Horsemen since SDCC 2003). And while I’m thinking I won’t make SDCC this year, I’m going to try to make it back to NYC for Comic-Con in October.