Brian and I sat around in the ToyBiz lobby for about an hour as the geeks filtered in. ToyBiz, in their infinite wisdom, herds the entirety of the internet press world through in one massive, sludgy presentation. The comparison to a herd is not unjustified, as they always have a few assistants following behind the crowd, making sure that no one is straggling or wandering out of the pasture. After a while, we were recognized by the guys from Fwooshnet, who seemed to share the same casual attitude towards the presentation that we did. While many of the geeks clustered near the doorway to the showroom, we chatted it up about years past as snippets of conversation from the other sites drifted on over.

"You guys were the only site the the My Little Pony coverage last year! Nice!"
"Yeah, that toy has like, 47 points of articulation. It's incredible!"
"[other sycophantic, fawning statement that was about toys and nothing else]!"

Lord, these guys didn't turn off. About 30 minutes late, we were guided into the showroom and caught our first in-person glimpse of the forthcoming line of toys from the Fantastic Four movie, as well as the FF trailer, though there was such a crowd that I didn't really get to SEE it as much as witness the amazing edges of it around the blockage of geeks. Most of the presentation was done around corners from where I was standing, so I didn't glean too much actual info from any of this really, but it's clear that there will be multiple paint decos and variations of the 5 main FF characters as at least one wave of them will be released before the movie itself and two waves after. There'll also be a set of five 12" rotocast figures, at about 10 bucks each, with a variant clear Invisible Woman and variant 'Flame On' Johnny, in mid-transformation. These are pictured in the first 8 photos. We were asked to hold our photography until the end, so everyone just anxiously milled, itching to upload the first shots of these things to their websites and claim whatever geek prize that earned, which is probably equivalent to some guy named Melvin in Ohio bookmarking your site in his favorites.

After the FF room was a small display of Spider-Man Classics, which is set to include a crazy looking Mysterio with an oversized dome head, a wrong-looking Beetle and a Steel-Armored Spidey. There were probably about a dozen other Spider-Man toys, but my brain is as such that I completely tune these out at this point. It's like when you've seen so many breasts that the sight of a single breast doesn't excite you anymore, unless you can immediately do something about it, you know? Sure, they're all attractive and interesting, but they're all pretty much the same, and you don't need one that transforms into a marmoset or something.

Next to the Spider-Man Classics was the beautiful Spider-Man Fearsome Foes box set, which helps to round out the ranks of the Sinister Six a bit better, with a well-articulated Lizard to compensate for the static one that was released early on in the line, a old man Vulture, a classic Rhino, a re-released Carnage (which was never one of their better figures), and another Spidey.

And then, the big one. Marvel Legends. A few waves worth. Pictures, with the hot-ass looking Galactus and everything.

Next to the Marvel Legends were a series of gashapon that ToyBiz will be releasing in mass quantities, given the success of their Japanese-released counterparts. Each will come in a small box package, and while some will be labeled and visible from the outside, many will be blind-packaged, meaning you don't know what you're gonna get. Frustrating? Sometimes, but with 64 different possibilities, from Thing to Mandarin, the possibility of duplicates seems small. The mini-figures will not have articulation, but are all posed in fun action scenes and seem to have great detail. Some assembly required.

And right next to that were a collection of miniaturized Marvel Legends figures, intended to be used in some kinda crazy game in which the actual pose determined their effectiveness in a battle. I don't really understand the mechanics at this point, but they'll surely become clearer as time goes on and we hear more about these.

And the last room, Lord of the Rings. This room was reduced in size from the previous years, almost by 75%. There were a couple of new box sets and figures on display, and a few new wind-ups, but there weren't many revelations to be had. At this point in the tour, we were asked to split up and handle photography in two large groups through the various rooms. I suggested that we go shirts and skins, but I think that my idea only brought back horrible flashbacks to the geeks instead of making them laugh. Much of the photographable spaces looked like this :

So, I waited until the grabassing convention was over and snapped a few shots for myself, which apparently really suck badly.

So, I scored some photos while Brian gave Jesse Falcon an inquisition about his involvement with the Upright Citizens Brigade performance group, which Jesse is an active member of. While Brian didn't score a gig for his oft-gigged band, The Zydeco Pilots, I got to overhear a tremendously humiliating conversation between Jesse and a fellow action figure reporter, who had decided to congratulate him on things that never happened and not stop congratulating him even after it was clear that no one had any idea what they were talking about anymore.

N : Hey, congratulations on the chicken soup thing!
Jesse, ever cool : I'm sorry?
N : Yeah. Congratulations on getting first prize for chicken soup! In the show.
Jesse : ...
N : The Andy Kaufman thing! The stand-up comedy show! Chicken soup!
Jesse : ...
N : Wasn't that you? You got first prize. Andy Kaufman.
Jesse, hand to chin: No, but do go on. I'm intrigued.

From here, it degraded into a jumbled, frantic mess of repeating the words 'chicken soup', 'Andy Kaufman' and 'award' in random order until someone just walked away, at which point I said, "Real smooth, there, Captain," to the clearly disoriented reporter. Maybe it was the best thing I've seen all year.

So that was a fitting conclusion toy Toy Fair 2005 - a geek getting his comeuppance, but soon over the horizon came an even better conclusion. As Brian and I were riding the subway back to the Port Authority area, I glanced at his nametag.

Me : "Brian.... you're a REPROTER!"

Brian looked at his hastily typed, misspelled nametag as I doubled over with laughter on the quiet train, and said, "And that's the end of Toy Fair."