Great Expectations

Great Expectations

OUT IN THE COLD Play Fair used the north building of the Javits Center in February 2016, the same weekend Toy Fair was in the building. Betty was about six months old and, even though it was zero degrees outside, she made the trip with us. We made use of the nursing room event staff constructed. It was like a giant porta potty: obviously not supposed to be there but totally useful.

Play Fair was supposed to be an extravaganza of toys and beloved characters

There were toys and beloved characters but not on a scale I couldn’t have created in my own basement

UNDERWHELMING Lego set up tables for constructing cars. Midtown Comics’ booth was the only vendor. Batman’s tumbler was available for pictures. Business Santa did not seem impressed.

Rather than hop on line right away to take pictures or test products, we played with Legos... a lot

Kal was taking pictures with anyone in a costume

CAN'T RESIST The boys had to choose between PJ Masks or Paw Patrol for pictures because the lines were so long. We didn’t really consider Sky Whale from Game Shakers even though they loved that show.

We had not advertised Play Fair as Stand In Line Fair to the kids, but they were willing to do it

AROUND THE BLOCK The line to get into the Nickelodeon area wrapped around its space, so we used our view of the sign to let us know how much progress we’d made. We ate popcorn and played with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle masks and Tracker hats. Once inside, they waited in one line to go down the slide and another to play with the Game Shakers' apps.

FUN TO BORROW The boys have the Crayola app, crayons, and coloring pages for Skylanders, but they acted like they’d never seen it before. I’ve seen the airbrush kit in stores, so I might have been more interested than they were in watching them test it.

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