Day 3 at the NYC Toy Fair 2007

Just after midnight the alarm clock in our room simply shut off. Not sure what happened, except that I had just thrown a pile of toy catalogues under the desk. They probably weighed 10 or 15 pounds, but I was hardly expecting them to cause any damage. As it was, I did not originally attribute this action as the cause of the difficulty. I had to call the front desk to get them to bring up another clock. I am fairly confident that they scavenged the clock from a room that was currently not being used. One of the staff brought up a new clock, but I had to switch cords with the old one. Turns out that the clock was not the problem. It was the cord. He had to go get a new cord. That old problem of whether to tip the staff again raised its ugly head. Sure, we were disturbing him in the middle of the night, but it wasn't our fault that the clock ceased to work...at least I did not think it was my fault at the time. In retrospect it had to been the fault of the toy manufacturers who make the aggregate weight of their catalogues so great. In the end, I was tempted to tip the man for his trouble, but he got off before I could get into the pocket of my trousers.

We tried to get up early to get a jump on the day, but it was 7:00 before we could drag ourselves out of bed and it was 8:00 before we felt ready to face the streets of NYC and subsequently the corridors of booths at Toy Fair. However, when I flung open the door I was faced with a sign which read "Elevator Temporarily Out of Service - Please Use the Stairs." (Our room was right across from the elevator.) Ugh? Well, I tried not to complain bitterly, but with my two sensitive once broken heels I found every step an inducement to comment on the state of the world. The six flights down really were not too bad, and we hit the streets to go to our familiar W Cafe. The food was good and reasonably priced as usual. Of course, afterward Robin had to go back to the room to brush her teeth. I did not possess the same need, but ultimately I mounted the stairs for a trip up and down the six flights. My stoicism lasted for about two floors and my poor wife was subject to my plaints for the remainder of the march.

We took 35th Street from 5th Avenue to the Javits Center. After all the ups, downs and acrosses, I decided that the next time I go to Toy Fair I am going to bring one of my canes for when my feet inevitably get bad. Alternatively, a motorized wheel-chair might be an option. I saw one or two on our trip there.

We stopped at the Subway shop on the way to Javits and picked up a couple of sandwiches. We did not want to be part of the captive lunch crowd that pay exorbitant prices for very little. Not that I blame Javits or the vendors. It is all a matter of economics - what the market will bear and the underlying taxes, maintenance and upkeep, etc. It is just that we did not want to participate in that market - so to speak.

In any case, it was another fun day at the Toy Fair. We saw a lot more new toys and old ones packaged differently. There were still many TV stations with news crews wandering around looking for a fun story. We swept by the New Tech booth to look at kites. They have redesigned some of their stunt kites so that they have a less geometric look. Robin likes the new look, I like geometry. We also zipped by the Saturnian booth as well as Toysmith. We love Toysmith, they always have neat little stuff at reasonable prices that we can pass on to the customer. We also put in at the Melissa and Doug booth. They were serving a buffet for customers. Unfortunately, we got there a bit too late to participate, but we did get some water, that we had at lunch.

We wandered the booths until the very last minute. Although we were approaching information overload we stuck it out until we were afraid they were going to lock us out of the ASTRA conference room where we had left our jackets.

On the trip back to the hotel (we walked of course), we contemplated on whether the elevator would yet be fixed. It was. We stopped by our room long enough to drop off the accumulated weight of a days collection of catalogues and price sheets then went in search of a restaurant. Our feet took us to the Empire State Building. Most people like to go to the top of the Empire State Building. But not us, we went to the basement, the Heartland Grill. A very nice place. Funny though, all the food seemed very mid-western. I had meat loaf of all things, but it was the second best meat loaf I ever had. I have to say second because the one meal my lovely wife ever cooked was meat loaf. (I do ALL the cooking around here. - we can't afford to eat out all the time.) But the meat loaf was not as good as the chops we had at Giggles the night before.

When we went to the Heartland Grill, we were not given the best seats. Somehow, when we go to a restaurant we are always given a table in the main stream of traffic. Robin said that we must have "cheap skate" written on our foreheads. I told her that "skate" was written on mine.

The walk back to the room proved treacherous, as ice had begun falling from the sky. Later, back at the room, Robin thumbed through manufacturer catalogues. I just put my feet up and read a three-day old Wall Street Journal I had taken along to read on the train.

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W.J. Rayment is the author of How Not To Build an Addition his wife owns and operates Toy Crossing a toy store in Harbor Beach, MI.