ToyFair (Part 1)

Friday, February 20, 2015

Last weekend I was in New York City for ToyFair, the annual trade show for the toy business that sees hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of buyers (but no kids!) gather for four days of meetings, buying sprees, and other assorted activities. Paizo had a nice display of our gaming stuff at the Diamond booth, as Diamond distributes our books and games into bookstores and comic shops. Diamond's sister company, Diamond Select Toys, makes a number of Pathfinder toys, including Pathfinder Minimates and an incredibly cool vinyl goblin bank, which comes out late next month.

Diamond's toy division didn't have any Pathfinder goodies on display this year, but I was able to meet with their team to discuss additional projects in 2015 and 2016 that I'm certain Pathfinder fans will love. I'm very excited by what the future has in store!

Here's a look at the Pathfinder section of the overall Diamond booth.

But even if the Diamond booth didn't have a lot of plastic Pathfinder items on display, that absence was more than made up for by our partners at WizKids, who showed off a huge number of new Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic figures. I managed to snap several photos of their display, but doing so was somewhat difficult because of the huge crowd ogling them throughout the convention. I had a chance to chat with a few hobby retailers who carried the line while I obsessively snapped my photos, which was definitely fun! ToyFair brings in all kinds of retailers, and it's always great to chat with store owners and managers who appreciate and support hobby gaming!

The largest Pathfinder Battles display at the WizKids booth was Dungeons Deep, the set we plan to release in June.

In this shot we see a Pukwudgie and an Andrazku Demon (both of which were originally going to be in the Reign of Winter set), with a Clockwork Golem in the middle and a Dire Bat in the background.

Here we have the second half of WizKids's display, with a bunch of figures including the Gnoll Slaver, Daughter of Urgathoa, and Sasquatch, some of which we've revealed already on the blog.

This shot reveals a Giant Centipede, Baykok, and Chupacabra in the foreground, with a Griffon, Daughter of Urgathoa, and some other stuff in the background.

Here we have a Dracolisk. I noticed that a lot of photos other ToyFair attendees had taken tended to have this figure in the background (sometimes not even standing up!), so I wanted to make sure to get a good shot of it for you guys.

That said, it was about this time that I started to get really, really frustrated with the quality of photos from my iPhone 4, so I switched over to a much better camera on the phone of one of my colleagues. That phone allowed me to take SUPER-HIGH-RES photos of Iconic Heroes Sets 2 and 3, which were the centerpiece of WizKids's ToyFair display.

Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out a way to get those photos onto my computer before my associate had to leave town, so I'm going to have to bring them to you next Friday.

Believe me, they're worth the wait!

Erik Mona
Publisher