Another February has rolled around and besides being Black History month and having Valentine's Day, there is a little event known colloquially as toy fair. The real name for this event is the American International Toy Fair (which seems strange to be both American and International), and this is the 99th year of the event. This event is held annually in the unofficial capitol of the world - New York City.
RTM will be covering this event with loads of pictures and information during the course of February 10th through the 14th. You'll have a chance to see some things that will never end up being produced, plus plenty that will over the course of the next year.
We'll be updating every day during the show, and then afterwards we'll
try to make it all a little neater with some better organization to make it easy to browse as the year goes by and we get closer to the release dates of these items.
RTM wasn't at Toy Fair last year, but we were. We covered the event for
Bobbi's About.com site last year, and the goal for this year is simple - provide the best coverage of the event available anywhere. It's a simple idea and we'll do our best to accomplish it. Our goal has never been to be the first to report anything, but to have the best report taken from only official sources. Remember, most sites will be covering the same companies, and any given company may be earlier for one site or another.
During last year's Toy Fair it seems the Buzz was the pointer for basically all coverage, and it wasn't a problem since RTM wasn't covering it. I think that speaks volumes about how strong the Buzz really is, but this year is a little different. Different in that RTM is covering the show, and while the Buzz will likely still be the busiest place discussing Toy Fair, we ask that you try to keep links outside the site to a minimum.
We know that you'll want to talk about everything as it comes in, and that's fine. To those who run other sites and like to plug your site here - don't. You know who you are, and so do we. It won't be tolerated so save yourself the trouble of looking bad and if you have your own commercial site, spend your time working on making it the best it can be rather than trying to use RTM for promotions.
Toy Fair seems like a lot of fun, and it is. But it's also work. Not bad work by any means, but we still have to get all the pictures ready for online presentation, book and schedule all the appointments, get a hotel and get around New York!
There are a lot of companies we'll be covering, and maybe a few surprises during and after the show. What you can expect are a lot of pictures of many things from many companies. If they'll allow us to take
pictures and post them, we will. Anyone e-mailing us in the next two weeks or so, don't think we're ignoring you - we'll be very busy!! We will get back to you when we catch our breath!
We now have Toy Fair buttons on the main and Buzz pages (under the news
box) and it will be our top story on the main page and in the news box. We aren't going to be doing updates as news items, so the best place to check will be the Toy Fair main page which will basically be a list of 'what's new' that we'll update over the course of the show. We'll also post info on the Buzz to help people know when we've added coverage, but our main Toy Fair page will be the gateway to our coverage.
Thanks for sticking with us through this, and we're doing everything we can to create the definitive coverage of Toy Fair and to reward your faith in the site and us.
-Rob and Bobbi
