Finally, at the end of the first day, we met with Mattel.

Mattel's showroom is the busiest showroom at the Fair, complete with coat check, large waiting room, twisting hallways and people bustling every which way, including a woman with the pointiest shoes I've ever seen in my life. We checked in at the front desk, feeling pretty worn out from hours upon hours of walking, and hung out on the fancy sofas for a few minutes before our tour guide greeted us, right on time. Again, Mattel graced us with an individualized tour through their boys lines of DC properties.

First up were items from the upcoming Batman movie. In true Batman style, there were about 15 ridiculous Batman variations, limited villains, and not a whole lot to say. Toy x shoots missile y, that kind of thing. This is the first time I've seen images of Scarecrow or R'as al Ghul, having preferred to previously cloister myself in blissful ignorance until the actual movie release. You can forgive me for ignoring photographs of Bubonic Marmoset Batman, right? Following that were The Batman cartoon items, all strange and unfamiliar to me since I work every Saturday and unfortunately miss the finer things like WB cartoons and cinnamon rolls. In the first image below, you can see Batman transforming into Bat Backhoe mode, and to his left, some kind of straitjacketed, Victorian Scarecrow. Pardon the sketchy quality of some of the photographs - the lighting in the Mattel showroom seems to have made my flash completely ineffective.

After the Batman stuff, we were escorted pretty quickly through the Harry Potter section by a tired looking man who slapped some round-rimmed costume glasses onto his face and expounded about the virtues of Harry Potter line of items. An item of note was this magical herb growing kit that's going to be marketed to girls and which includes seeds, a mini vivarium, a mortar and pestle and all kinds of vials, the ultimate result being a magical herbal charm that one grows, prepares and wears in a locket device around your neck. "Since girls like herbs and charmy things, because that's what the script says", we were told, and after the cold, planned pitches that we'd been given, it was an appreciated honesty.

Moving right on to the JLU items, which are fairly self explanatory and expand the roster of the Justice League considerably.

While the diversity of Mattel's products spread over nearly an entire floor of the building, these are really the only things that held any significant interest. The best part about visiting Mattel is the fact that they completely, totally hook you up like you wouldn't believe. Let's take a look at what came out of the Mattel gift bags that we were sent on our way with...

-1 illuminated, color-changing Puffy Ami Yumi pen
-1 75th Anniversary Fisher Price pen
-1 2-pack of mini-figures from the upcoming movie, Robots
-a box containing 2 large chocolates shaped like early Fisher Price toys
-1 random Fashion Fever Barbie outfit
-Puck Hedz poster
-Fisher Price Shake 'n' Go Racer, which you shake the bejesus out of to power up and then set free.
-AcceleRacers DVD, Barbie Fairytopia DVD & Doggie Daycare DVD
-Furryville Prima Mouserina, if that makes any sense.
-UNO H20 set with clear cards and new game mechanics
-Xylophone keychain
-high quality denim Mattel totebag
-...and hottest of all, ToyFair 2005 media guest exclusive Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars.

Now, last year, the ANR crew was harassed by a bespectacled geek man as we left the Mattel building who tried to beg our cars off of us, presumably for a quick resale on eBay. It became pretty clear that he was interested in the profit aspect of collecting these cars for a quick 25 bucks off of the rare media guests and not really interested as a collector, thereby placing him as one of the lower life forms there is. No deal is as good as it sounds. Lo and behold, the exact same guy came up to us again this year and tried begging our cars off of us. Here's a truncated version of what happened.

Okay, those last two panels aren't true.

And that was the end of day one.