Welcome back my friends, so when we last met here on “The Chronicles of Piercing Ken”, I had mentioned that the PiercingMetal side of the creative coin was well into the coverage of the recently held Toy Fair. Now I’m officially doing double duty since there was a bunch of visuals that make more sense being featured over here. I’ll continue along with limited narrative so you can just indulge and enjoy the proceedings. This was a photo-op of Ms. Rachel who I am told by the friends who are parents is quite the big deal. It would have been fun to meet such a personality but that was not meant to be.
This is “Crazy Aaron” and he’s more kind than crazy. He does have a line of “Thinking Putty” and I’ve given out a lot of these over the years and they are quite awesome. So creative and fun.
Fun In Motion Toys had some high flying acrobats on silks…
While Spin Master had puppies…
Now these two images have already been featured over on PiercingMetal, or at least I mean different ones of a similar theme. The amazing Formula 1 representing Hot Wheels and the LEGO McLaren.
Okay so these are called the “Fart Monsters” and they had numerous giant-size goblins around the lobby and other general floor spaces. They had a speaker on them and when you got close they farted. It was hilarious.
I know I also shared a similar image on PM but during my exploring a met a visiting student to the show and when she couldn’t find her group I advised she tell them to meet her under the Pikachu and that is how they found her. Fun.
Here’s a quick visual of the entrance to one side of the expo floor. Since many things I focus on are on the lower level I spend a lot of time down there but there are exhibitors and their reps that I need to touch base with on the main floor as well so I had to do that as well.
This is just the signage for the Press Center. There were too many people milling about at the time that I snapped this and I didn’t want to include them. This year there seemed to be a lot of the kid influencers and I mean a lot of them. When I first began attending Toy Fair, children were not permitted at all since the whole influencer craze wasn’t a thing.
Behind the Press Center was a small stage where some lectures were happening. I thought that this was interesting but I was far too busy to spend any time there. Truth be told I barely was in the Press Center. I’d drop in to hang my coat and fill the coffee cup and then it was roll out time.
For this year’s show I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time at the Crayola booth but that was okay since I usually get the full rundown on everything that is new and exciting from their appearance at the Toy Insider events. I just love the level of creativity that Crayola is bringing to the table these days.
As a rule I don’t generally focus on too many games and that is based on it being such a massive area at Toy Fair. If you run a game website and can secure yourself a working press pass then you will have content for months from that section alone. Here are a few visuals from some game creators we met.
“Monkey Run” was cute and reminded me a little of the classic “Barrel Of Monkeys” that I had when I was a child.
If you’ve visited any of the Toy Fair 2025 posts on PiercingMetal you’ve already seen how I included some of the exhibitors in the broader overviews and that was done when I didn’t have a lot of visuals from a particular company. Such was the case for our friends at Safari Ltd. who had a few displays out in the main lobby.
Inside I decided to mainly lend focus to their new offerings for 2025. Generally speaking, I see Safari Ltd. at the NY NOW Trade show that I cover twice a year for “The Chronicles”.
The Toobs are a wonderful idea since its several smaller characters in one long tube. I’ve lost count of the different varieties of these and they make perfect stocking stuffers.
These dig kits are interesting as well.
While I don’t actually own many of their products myself, I do still lean to the dinosaurs and their mythical creatures. They did Bigfoot a few years ago and I do need to find myself one of those in the wild.
As I head to the end of this installment, I’m going to share a few of the candid photos that actually feature me in them. Friends often chide me about never being in my photos while I know other media that are in so many photos that you forget what they even say they are “covering”. So down below its your humble narrator with the cast of parade characters, the amazing Bluey and friend and in front of that Sparkle Smash Monster Truck. Whew. Good times.
Oh yeah and lest I forget, in addition to the puppies the fine folks at Spin Master had pizza on hand and I was able to enjoy a slice. This was an artichoke variety and while not my own go to pizza, I never have been known to turn such things down.
Okay my friends I’ve hit that limit that I like to keep per post and actually went one over since I wanted to be sure to use the pizza slice photo. With that said I will say don’t be sad just yet because I do still have a number of exhibitor spotlights along with some special features. The latter will likely get individual posts of their own but as you read this I am still mentally mapping out how I want to share them with you. One of the benefits of online journalism is the ability to post as much as you want over and over. Now for the plug, to keep up with everything that this outlet did from Toy Fair 2025 just click HERE to launch a new browser tab with everything in one place. It’s also very important to support the brand on our social media so please follow Piercing Ken via our Official Linktree. See you again soon with more from the 2025 Toy Fair.
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