Around wednesday afternoon, I met Brian at Grand Central. Dan had the sanity to return to real life, and his real job, and his real girlfriend. Me, I was giving up another day of my life to play with things, and as wonderful as that sounds, I was getting pretty weary. I probably came home smelling like plastic, silly string stains on my collar. The memories are cloudy.

The subway station right outside the south Toy Building had this mosaic hat theme on the walls. I took advantage of it. I'm so clever.

Brian and I didn't have too much time to look around. By wednesday afternoon, the place was shutting down. People were loading up boxes, doors were closed and tumbleweeds of twist ties rolled the halls. The woman in the press room informed us that everything was pretty much closed and we were getting a very late start.

Me : Yeah, we were forced into an appointment at 3 PM today. Go figure.
Lady : But it's a really late start, you know.
Me : I've been here for 2 days already. Brian's just showing up to help cover today.
Lady : I don't know how much you're going to get to see.
Me : Well, we do have that appointment at 3.
Lady : Everything's pretty much closed.
Me : But... yeah. It's late. Wow. I'll be over here looking at... something else now.

I wandered over to the racks of press material as the lady typed up Brian's badge and grabbed a free Crackle bar, which was wrapped in a printed-out label advertising 'The Adventures of Thumbs Up Johnnie'. I had no idea what it was, but it was filled with life-giving chocolate. A couple days later, I'd check out the website, which needs to be seen to be believed, because I was unaware that thumbprints could wear cowboy hats, or that a giant dime with a propeller hat had the capacity to run a shop, let alone in the harsh economy of Happy, Texas. Many a lesser enormous, personified coin could not bear the strain and just upped and spent themselves.

They gave me a free candy bar, who am I to complain?

There seems to be a mentality that we encounter every year, tucked away into these small, obscure ventures in which someone creates a character and decides that it's actually a good idea to market it. Last year, it was Eye Man. The year before that, it was Space Logic, which involved a collection of phallic little objects with googly eyes, which needed to be placed in an expensive and unnecessary 'regeneration chamber' to illuminate them. These creators don't seem to realize, usually, that one can't just sketch out a character and expect it to have instant appeal in a world where media inundation seems to require a full toy line, a cartoon show, a childrens book and prizes in cereal boxes before anyone notices anything new. It'll be quite the day when Thumbs Up Johnnie and Lu Lu Pinky see the light of day, but more power to 'em.

On the way out, Brian noticed The Amazing Sea Monkeys on the directory, on the 16th floor. The elevators, well, they only went up to 15 floors. After that, I was convinced that we'd fly off into the ether and come crashing to the Earth in a few hours. Riding this elevator up to a floor that was above where it indicated that the elevator stopped... see, I have a slight fear of heights. Not incapacitating, just enough to make me dizzy and nervous should I look out a window above the 5th floor. I also have slight issue with elevators, since there were numerous occasions at SUNY New Paltz in which elevators decided to stop moving and leave me inside, or to not close and start moving, or any other combination of things that could give you the impression that you were going to die. However.... there were Sea Monkeys waiting. So I went.

We arrived on a floor littered with boxes and people moving out of the showrooms, and while the sea monkey display was still up, the presenters had decided to call it a day and were nowhere in sight. We had a few hours to kill, so we went back to the 9th floor, where the bridge between the toy buildings is. This is also the location of the Mega Bloks offices, and I swear, you'd think they were discussing the logistics of how to dispose of their atomic bomb in some disarmament treaty. The atmosphere outside of their offices is violently serious. Have I mentioned this before? The men in suits quietly discussing secretive things over multiple tables? You don't want to make eye contact. They'll have to kill you.

The 9th floor, though, also had WowWee toys. Our first year at ToyFair, we'd visited ex-NASA scientist Dr. Mark Tilden, so we thought we'd say hello again. The lobby was dark, but Dr. Tilden was standing there in discussion with someone, and we couldn't miss an opportunity to see him. A man with a boisterous personality, an Australian accent, a robotic genius and an air of casual excitement about his inventions, including the Robosapien and the accompanying lines of other Robo toys.

Dr. Tilden recognized us immediately and thanked us for some great press quotes in our original write up, which was entirely Brian, I admit. Though the showroom was technically closed and in slight end-of-Fair disrepair, he gave us a good 15 minute walkthrough. The Robosapien was still a prototype when we'd seen it the first year, when Hasbro had just dropped the company. The Robosapien was a rough-stompin' robot that walked around, picked stuff up, danced, and could easily endure a fall down a flight of stairs. In the two years since we saw the Robo toys, Dr. Tilden had slept on the floor in Chinese factories to make sure that his toys were made correctly, and as a result, the Robosapien - an incredibly risky toy venture - has found huge levels of success due to its quality.

Built to not just be a robot, but a highly hackable robot that one could disassemble and hack into, it found a cult following with geeks everywhere. We saw some demonstrations of the original Robosapien, but were even more impressed with the expansion of the line into a Robosaurus, and a second incarnation of the Robosapien, which was taller, had more functions, human-type hands, and could recognize colors on command. We watched as the robot listened to sounds around him, and sat down and stood up again from a position in which he was lying with his back right to the floor. One of the most challenging aspects about humanoid robots is achieving a physical balance between gravity and the robot itself. You can have a really smart robot, but getting him to know how to stand up without falling over is a completely different hurdle that Dr. Tilden seems to have conquered.

Even beyond the coolness of all that, the Robosapien V2 has the ability to be physically programmed. You can actually take his body, twist him around, turn this and tweak that, and a moment later, he'll repeat everything that you just did to him. The possible applications of this are distracting. And sexy.

The spindly Robopet is the answer to the ridiculously overpriced Aibo. Part dog, part spider, part AT-ST, the Robopet kicks the Aibo's butt with the same collection of functions as the Robosapien, affecting moods, having the ability to roll over and stand up again, as well as being able to detect objects and walk around them. In addition to that, the Robopet will respond to commands given by the newest generation of Robosapiens, not to mention have an extensive battery life, running off of just a few AAA batteries.

Finally, we encountered the Roboraptor, a 32" long, affectionate pet with all of the qualities of the Robopet, but with more of an attention to interaction instead of performance. He'll respond to physical stimulus, play pulling games with his jaws, have different moods, and have the sensory capability to follow a light around a room. Seeing the Roboraptor in action, it really emoted quite a convincing personality and reacted in a lot of ways that one wouldn't expect to be preprogrammed into the robot.

All of these devices can be hacked, and even have many secret functions and modes that you can discover. The playability seems endless and easy to understand, advancing to more challenging levels of play. Program the Robos to destroy all of your red G I Joes, or pop it open and add new limbs and functions. All of these items run at around 100 dollars or less.

Dr. Tilden bid us farewell and soonafter headed out of the toy buildings, after graciously entertaining our nerdness, even after the secretary let us know that she wanted to go home. Brian and I headed down to the 5th floor and waited around for the ToyBiz appointment to start.