Toy Fair!

On monday I went to the New York Toy Fair, where all good toy store owners, Science or otherwise, go to see the latest offerings. I went through the Fair too fast, and really should try to spread this out over a couple of days next time. Ah well. Next year I'll spring for a hotel.

Anyway, I made contacts with lots of companies I remember from my days at Edmund. Made a few orders and saw lots of stuff that is not relevant to my store. The big thing this years seems to be marshmallow shooting guns. It was a fun booth, but I would not want to be near it since they were fond of demonstrating the range of the guns by shooting a marshmallow straight into the air. Where it would come down, who knows?

I did find a good construction toy that would fit into my stores 'scheme'. Its called Uberstix and its got lots of nice kits, is flexible (so the things you make can be played with). One of the kits is actually a miniature working catapult! There's also scale model towers that can be built with huge 1000+ piece kits. Yee-ha! What's really nifty about these things is that they can be used with K'nex and Lego pieces. They actually attach to them. Neat!

I missed finding a battery dealer, and I forgot to go back to check out the metal detector guys (oops). This is why I am annoyed at myself for trying to do this all in one day.

I did make certain to hit all the manufacturers I buy things from. I got to see a few things on my shelves in action (I've been hesitant to rip open packaging just to satisfy my curiosity). My bag was stuffed with catalogs by the time I was done, and after a while that weight started to hurt. I need to think things through next time.

I also saw Steve Spangler, who pretty much discovered the 'Mentos in Coke' thing, and has written several popular books on science. I also saw Bill Nye, who was in a booth that had all of two or three toys with his name on them. Seems like that line isn't going very strong. Oh well.

What was of interest is that a lot of Discovery Store 'exclusives' are now being held out to the general retailers since Discovery closed their Mall stores. Most of them had just a few changes made cosmetically and it showed.

There many toys that I ignored: Dolls, etc. Although it was fun to look in a few booths and see stuffed animals you would not find from other dealers:



Yup. Jellyfish. Stuffed Jellyfish.

I made contact with Giant Microbes, who tell me that I am the model for sales for a retail store. They were very happy to see me and I hope that sales of their stuff is only going to increase. The guy in charge of sales actually wants to come to my store and see what I do to make the level of sales I have. Sweet. While I was there I had a small preview. This one is for math5, enjoy:



After the show I went out to dinner with jadegirl and her husband at a wonderful Ethiopian place. It was good to see her again.

The ride home was a pain. The less said the better.