Meng's Playground • Foodspotting and Comics, a perfect combination!

Foodspotting and Comics, a perfect combination!

Foodspotting Booth

I was curled up in my jammies doing my weekly catchup (on Facebook messages, organizing photos, and episodes of Glee) when I first found out I was going to help spread the Foodspotting love during New York Comic Con. Yippee!!

Bursting my bubble, Bill asked the obvious:
“What does food have to do with comics?”

Like Lisa Simpson stumbling over the spelling of ameliorate (season 14, episode 12), I answered carelessly on an otherwise easy question.

“Well, everyone likes good food, right?”

Zombies and Foodspotting

So off I go, spreading joy and cheer all across NYCC with Amy and Fiona of Foodspotting. After two days of…

testing small children on accepting candy from strangers (95% failure rate)
getting price gouged on snacks ($4.25 for a 16 oz. Coke! That would buy me 6 dumplings and a soda IRL)
(barely) surviving the iOS 5 upgrade

…I finally have a better answer to the question: what does food (or more specifically, Foodspotting) have to do with a comic book convention?

1. Artists and illustrators
Fanboys, artists, and writers all flock to comic conventions to meet their favorite comic book creators. If they’re lucky, they get to chat with their idols or even leave with an autograph or sketch.

Limited Edition Foodspotting NYCC Pins
Even on this front, Foodspotting is here to help! To help facilitate this otherwise awkward fanboy moment, Foodspotting supplies a crucial icebreaker: a highly-collectible limited edition of 200 NY Comic Con button designed by illustrator Cliff Chiang.
Yes! Instead of showing up empty-handed like 99% of other fanboys, just whip out your super-rare and impressive souvenir! It separates those “in the know” from the n00bs.

Tokidoki
2. Famous people

Comic conventions are all about being larger than life: from the incredibly intricate costumes to the epic noms bag that everyone was toting their swag in. But most importantly, people want to see big-time celebrities! Stan Lee! Wylie Dufresne! Amy Cao!
Yes! Prepare to be star-struck in every way possible. First, our booth was luckily situated right in the the autograph arena in Javits North with optimal lighting for flattering paparazzi shots. Second, lucky NYCC-goers on Friday had a chance to catch a star-studded panel discussion featuring Foodspotting’s very own Amy Cao, wd-50 owner Wylie Defresne, cheery Marvel talent scout C.B. Cebulski, and others. Very exciting!

Bounty for the Bounty hunter
3. Free swag
Last, but not least, is the free swag! Veteran NYCC-goers seem to have developed mental map with laser-focus on the tables known to give freebies (or maybe their strategy is to just look for the very-mobbed booths).
As an avid 3Rs believer (Reuse, Reduce, Recycle), I’ve never been a huge fan of tchotchkes. It always felt wasteful to pick up jelly bands that slip off my wrist and clog the sink, or plastic keychains for the hundreds of keys I imagine I’d inherit if I ever became a high school janitor.

Instead of showering convention goers with the tired old logo pens, we stuck with consumables and usables. We recognized new users with the aforementioned collector’s pin (re-pinnable and fashionable on every outfit!), and rewarded existing fans and loyal users with a high-quality Foodspotting T-shirt (that doesn’t dry out of shape after just one wash!). Yes!

Amy and Fiona

But finally at the end of the day, we all have to eat. I hope that with Foodspotting’s help, we’ll all have “X-Ray vision to good food” (best description ever, Amy!) and no one (not even R2D2) will ever have to waste a meal on mediocre food again.

Want more photos? See the complete photo set!

R2D2 and Amy