Writer and illustrator Lisa Hanawalt snuck into the New York Toy Fair and wrote/illustrated a very funny, very snarky account of it for The Hairpin. My wife used to go to Toy Fair every year for work, and she always made it sound like a cross between a season in hell and Willy Wonka’s toy factory.
The Toy Fair isn’t for kids. The show’s held yearly at the Javits Center, Manhattan’s main convention facility (a.k.a. massive gray box), and it’s full of serious adults in business suits with corporate accounts. It’s not supposed to be fun. We’ll see about that!
Toy Fair badges are only available for pros, so my boyfriend’s mom generously registered me and my friend Tim as employees of her chia seed company. My badge says “CHIA POWER/Assistant Buyer.” We’ll avoid walking by chia products for fear of having to hold our own in a chia conversation.
I want to pretend we’re here for legitimate reasons, so Tim and I work out a cover story, “we distribute chia products, but we’re looking to branch out into toys and athletics.” That totally sounds like a thing, right?
