Look and Learn on the road

Spent the day at the Brand Exhibition at Olympia where Look and Learn had a booth. The exhibition is where a lot of companies show off their latest products -- characters rather than whole product lines, although there was plenty of product on show, too, from a giant Lego Millennium Falcon to the latest in Japanese trading card games.

We were there to promote the vast range of images Look and Learn has the rights too and took the opportunity to hand out sample magazines from the reprint series we've been doing. (Just in case you're new to Bear Alley, you can find out more about subscribing to the "best of..." magazine at the Look and Learn website subscription page.) We had a few puzzled looks from folk who were either too young to remember the original magazine and who probably thought we were on a subscription drive; this was more than made up for by the number of people who grinned broadly and announced that they remembered the magazine from childhood. Some could even remember specific features and strips.

There were quite a few meetings which will hopefully turn into some interesting items in the future since the visitors to these kind of shows range from greetings cards manufacturers to jigsaw puzzle makers, book publishers, trading card producers... you name it and they were probably there.

As there was a ban on cameras I only managed to take a couple of snapshots. You can see Stephen Pickles, who edits the magazine and recently produced The Bumper Book of Look and Learn, and Pooja who handles all the artwork that we put up on the website's picture gallery and various other production duties. Laurence, our publisher, managed to keep his back to the camera or was in meetings so has escaped appearing in today's little picture parade.

Sadly, I didn't get my picture taken with the giant Paddington Bear who was wandering around the show, but I did get a snap of the Paddington I'd like to have taken home. After all, there was a huge notice attached to him saying "Please look after this bear..."