Second day at the Singapore Toy and Comic Convention entrance

Today is the second day of the Singapore Toy and Comic Con 2008 

Having experienced the confusion of where and how to queue to enter Toy Convention hall on the first day, my new friends and I made a pact to arrive even earlier at 9am today.  We figured that we’d have more time to find out the queueing system so that we could park ourselves at the correct places to secure the white exclusive Bearbrick figure today.  This time there were only around 30 people in front of us.

We anticipated that the hundreds of other people who had gotten ‘lost’ in the same queueing ‘fog’ like us yesterday would likely to think the same like us too, and indeed they did!  We knew that many collectors missed out the red exclusive Bearbrick figure yesterday so those people would arrive early today too, hence we better be ’safe than sorry’.  Basically the queuing ‘madness’ is all for the exclusive free Bearbrick figures (given out to the first 1,000 visitors per day).

Fortunately for today, the organisers directed the visitors who had already registered on the first day, to queue up on level 4, outside Hall 402 instead.  We thought that we just needed to show our 2-day wristband passport to receive the little white bear.  This time, there was a security personnel deployed early in the morning to control the queue. 

Visitors who had not registered yet would proceed to level 6, outside Hall 603 to register and receive their passport before they could join the Bearbrick collection queue.  Or this is what we thought so.  Basically the staff won’t tell you anything so you have to be proactive and ask them.

The time spent in the queue today was easier to pass as we had friends to chat with and we had the events guide book in our hands to refer to.  We planned our route and strategies to move about later in the hall for free gifts redemption and autograph sessions for the day. 

Again I felt a little silly spending my Sunday morning queueing for a little piece of white exclusive plastic, but being a toy collector, how could I not attend the inaurugal Singapore Toy and Comic Convention right here at my doorstep?  Besides this will be quite an experience for me, whether I get to bring home the toys I collect, or not.

Finally at close to 11am, the Bearbrick collection queue started to move and we got to collect our little white bear from the counter in an orderly manner.  The staff laid out a few pieces of the little white bear on the counter at a time, for people to pick up and then move along quickly to make way for ohers behind in the queue. 

After the bear collection, we proceeded to enter the hall and then we all went off to collect the 4 different blue-inked stamps from different booths on our passport cards.  This would qualify us to redeem the free gifts on offer for today.  Yeah I know I felt a little weird joining in this frenzy for freebies but I since I was already there, I might as well have some ‘fun’.

I’ll leave the free gifts redemption details for another post, stayed tuned..!