I liked the 'chocolate rocks' that some team handed out at Nats. I voted for 'candy' because there is only so much you can do with a shopping bag full of buttons... but food; there's always a need for that. Tatoos were cool too... I also got '69' tan lines. But nothing beats those little fans that one of the Delphi teams handed out.

Do I need to say what I liked? (See picture of myself and first link in sig.)

Yeah you cant beat the fans, especially when you are frying in Florida. Although the only downside was that some of them broke quite easily...oh well we got rid of all of them, and people liked them.

Ducky's fav.s
 

As judging by the three drawers of FIRST giveaways I have gathered over the past two years... and none are doubles thank you!... [was mascot at nationals one year, much trading] I have found the coolest objects to be....[drumroll]

-mini barrel of monkeys i got at one of the competitions... has kept me ocupied many a time.
-the chocolate rocks from one of the hawaii teams
-phonecard
-the fannypacks and pouches
-anything you can mooch off team members (ie- jerseys, hats, noisemakers) I really love the shirt I traded one of the brazilian teams for.

Our team has given out some stuff that disapears quite quickly. I personally really liked the earplugs [which were a big hit] and the hologram stickers [some of whom still reside stuck to the bleachers at Drexel -they save our seats in the off-season I guess-]

We've also done homemade pins, chocholate mints -hey anyone want some melted chocolate? you can lick it off the wrapper!-, and occasionaly sticks.

At the LA Regional some team from Hawaii was going around the pits hand delivering every team a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts. Ummm were those good. That must have been pretty expensive - I know those things aren't cheap.

because we're the 'Feds' we were thinking about handing out cheep plastic handcuffs. However, we couldn't this past year due to lack of funding. But when we finally have money to spend on handcuffs i think that they will be very cool.

For the record, I got sick on those gummy sharks... couldn't stand another gummy for a week :)

Those 225 keychains were incredibly cool. My mom still keeps one or two on her enormous keychain she started in 1980...

My all-time favorite hand-out, however, was the pre-greased shop rags in 2001. I remember a guy just sitting on this huge orange-looking clear bag, when I walked up to trade. He got up, dug out a rag, and handed it to me, with the team number written out and grease on one side :) That was definitely one of the funniest handouts I've seen.

This year 422 handed out "I drive my other car with JOYSTICKS" as a bumper sticker, but they were too small and tended to become one with a car's paint (read: personal experience). A very zen sticker if I say so myself.

team candy can melt. team button its light inexpensive each year and you they become collectors items.

Kodak Picture Maker
 

This year at the Johnson & Johnson Mid-Atlantic Regional, a team brought one of Kodak's picture maker kiosks that they let everyone use for free. Very cool to be able to have instant hard-copies of your digital photos.

DVD's
 

I think it would be really really cool to get DVD's. My first year with robotics was 2002, so i only heard about the cool stuff that people had previously handed out, not to mention the awesome stuff i got this year. Phone cards and stuff are really good ideas, but I would really like to see someone do a DVD that has a demo of their robot set to music and/or a section that has profiles about all the team members with short scenes of them working on something. I know it is expensive to do that kind of stuff, but that doesn't mean you have to hand them out, you could have contests to win them. I would be the first one in line if i could win a DVD! Just an idea. :D

Video 'business cards'
 

Some teams and companies already do this, but they make a digital video similar to what you are describing, put them on little CD's, and hand them out to people. That may be cheaper than DVD's and you get the same results. Also, can't assume that everybody has a DVD player, computers are still more accessable.

P.S. I still like candy the best, it's the least time and space consuming, and you get to say 'Yum.'

First off, hats off to DanLevin53 for recessatating this thread that was in remission for 5 months.

Also, I have seen a few CD's that were handed out, and many were quite amuzing.

Our team made a cool little interactive CD. I don't know if you have seen them but we burned them onto those 100MB MiniCDs. It was mainly for judges, but I think a few got passed around to other teams.

On our CD we had a Flash animation which had info on our team and a copy of the animation.

I would reccommend Flash MX for ppl interested in making a CD...its an incredibly fun (for me, at least) program to learn and you can do many cool things with it. It isn't hard to create a menu and some buttons with text, and cool stuff like rollovers for buttons is built in.

Are those like the 3 inch ones that fit in the little "tray within a tray" in your CD-ROM drive?

yeah, those're the ones

they're pretty cool, i don't remember if they were cheaper or more expensive than regular ones, though. They function and burn exactly the same, just with 100MB capacity.

Yeah, I got one as a GCN prevew. We were going to do something like that, but it never happened. Hopefully we will get to it this year.

I was thinking about that my team should get the small CD's and use those for give out (along with buttons :)), but that idea never caught on when ever I told anyone about it. Maybe I can convince more people on the team to make them this year.

we actually made team promo CD's on the cool little ones...but we gave them to companies. i never thought of handing them out to other teams, but that would be cool. our team was actually fortunate enough to get all the lil CD's made for free by this company.

ooh thats lucky...we were up all night burning CDs hours before Florida. We also didn't get to make labels for em, at Florida we had to recruit all of the girls on the team to write the title on them because none of us had good enough handwriting. However we didn't know that almost none of the girls knew how to spell.....

been there...girls writing cyberblue 234 all day on frisbee's...what fun!

Personally, I like to get candy from other teams, but DVDs/VCDs with the team info would bring more attention to the other team, though costly.

What I wanted to give out this year was...
surfer girl and boy antenna toppers
painted in our team colors and BCR on the back. We have one on our robot. I've tried and tried to reach the owner for a donation. No answer. If we had money, I'd buy 'em.

It looks like we may have buttons to hand out this year. I'd love to pass out candy. We have our Gracious Professionalism Posters to hand out, and past issues of Nuts & Volts, and their mini robotics' issue.

My team (beachbot) is from California so we are gonna give out free samples of sunscreen for the LA regional (i think) cause it will be really sunny if you are outside! So come to the regional and ask for sunscreen k!

Well, I know that last year our giveaway was a hit with everyone at the LA regional (literally and figuratively). We made 1,000 tortional yo-yos for people to play with during the time in between matches. I dont know what we r gonna do this year. I think that we can even outdo ourselves this year. If u all come to the SoCal regional u might find out. Hope to see you all out there. GL with the building season.

Well I guess 247's venture into the candy market didn't make a big impact. Last year we (being 247) gave out gummy bears and full-size hershey's bars. We made our own wrappers for them which gave stats about our bot and a picture of the bot.

I think in handouts the main thing you want is people to remember you by the handout. Now I think the candy bars we did at 3 regionals were way to expensive to give away but the idea on them was good.

I have a bunch of handouts sitting in a box in my room, mostly buttons, and keychains and only 1 has something that triggers a Button -> Bot memory. That is from '00, team 66's Mystery Machine, and their Route 66 symbol. (Their robot, for those whom never saw:)


Whatever you give out, people should be able to identify it without a team number on it, then you know it was good. (by w/o a number I mean if someone covered the number and showed you it, you would know what team)

i know last year our team gave out soccer balls, cow bells, and they had earrings made out of ball bearings...but there were only a few of those...so i don't know who got them...

what would you guys think of stadium horns...you know those really big horns...


and these:


send me a message...let me know what you think....

I like the idea of the stadium horns. That will definitly boost the amount of energy and team spirit at these competitions.

thank you for your opinion scott :)

I love both items!

okay another quick question....

Water guns?? cool or not??

and....would we be able to get them onto planes?? i know they are only water guns...but they will look like guns in xray machines...ya know??

Water guns might be nice in the heat of Texas, but you always have the slight error of getting it into a robot and then who knows what might happen. Anyone test what water does to robots? :D

Forget water guns, go for a fire hose. :yikes:

A calculator, for this year's scoring system. ;)

our team gave out over 100 different kinds of buttons... ranging from just team lightning's L to a cowboy riding a lightning bolt... one's that said stuff like "The deer smacking, squirrel squashing, driving machine" and ones with a robot bushwacking... one was made out of a piece of pizza... eww it got moldy eventually...

look for 862's variety of buttons this year :D

At 2002 Nationals, the Dragon Slayers' mini-beam swords made for some great between-competition fun. I think they were my favorite handout, but the classic button is definitely always fun to collect. Bottled water would definitely be the most practical though.

Our head prof is like a 50 year old toddler, in 2001 we handed out rubber goldfish that said 31 on them, so this little kid walks up and says "can i have a button" all sweet and cute, our prof yells "no, but you can have a fish" this little kid must be scared for life, but we were all rolling with laughter

and the triangle to my team 225 keychain i got in 2000 is somewhere in philmont, but i do have the square still on my keys,

oh and their was a team at lone star that was throwing madi gras beads around in the hotel, and they wanted me to flash them, needless to say i didnt, but a guy on my team did, and they threw him beads before they realized it was a guy, ive never seen more embarrased people.

asher

heheh maybe I'll find a way to get out DVDs this year, I have a dvd burning drive and they can be really cheap when you buy them by the houndreds ;)

is there a company that sells candy and those little trinkets out there that sells at bulk for good prices, I will admit I am tired of seeing buttons so I want to give out something diffrent
a website would be great
Thanks:D

I like oriental.com and Stupid Stuff

lol. sounds good to me :D

Food!!!

(preferably fish)

~Pyro

For the past few years the Flashbacks team 168 gave out, tye dyes buttons, beaded necklaces and face paintings.
We get some of our best artists and paint team logos on everyones face if they wish. :-)

The pratical engineering side of me thinks that Allen Keys would be a great give-away :-)

3 cheers for practicality!!!!! w00t!!!!!

Make sure they are ball-drivers though!

We had KeyChains
 

We've given keychains out for about 4 years nows.

And of course, MOE socks. :-) (and anything else that can possible be tye dyed, We've done it)

Rubber bands are always a fun idea...especially when they find it useful that they can shoot it at other teams :)

I'd love to see Izzy cooking SPAM with a magnifying glass, but that stuff is not quite "actually pretty good." But I've only had solar cooked food once, and if it can make me hot dog taste better, it can make SPAM taste better.

SPAM is nasty. hehe.

Koozies??? would anyone want koozies???

Rubberbands are actually quite useful. I remember that a team handed them out last year at competition. The usefulness came in when we needed to tie a few rope strands together on our robot's basket. We didn't have extra rope, but hey! We did had some rubberbands. So, I'd like to say "thank you" to that team :)

How about sleep? Can anyone give out some sleep at UTC?

sleep good
 

yeah, that is a good idea, albeit not as marketable as some other stuff. i think that toys in general are the best giveaways, because they keep the non-involved people in any team's pit entertained, while leaving the engineers and other informed people pest-free to work on the robot!! :p i know they certainly kept me entertained last year...well, that's my idea.

All of the above.

Anything the team can afford to give away is good. Free stuff is always good, just don't forget about buttons. Something has to weigh Woodie down.

Last year my team gave out mainly buttons, but we had a few extra shirts lying around that we gave to judges. We also had quite a few 2in diameter circles of lexan and conveyor belt in our pit that one kid started writing our team number on and passing out. For any of you that watched the WorldCup this last summer, you may have noticed that after each match, the teams exchanged shirts. I think that this would be a fun idea for the HumanPlayers, Drivers, and Mentors to take part in. I don"t know whether it would be better to switch with an opponent or one of your alliance partners, but if you could get shirts cheap enough, this would be a really fun way to remember teams you had a direct involvement with. Also, as my team this year has a somewhat mystical/eastern religous/chi type theme, I"ve thought of getting someone on our team to learn yoga so we could have FIRST type yoga sessions to focus one"s concentration for the intense 10 seconds of box-placing and amass good karma to keep your robot working during the autonomous section.

what about a tree???
 

its been proposed that our team might give out trees this year.

how would you like that? eah?

:ahh:

gear oil pump things
 

OK so I have seen in several post people talking about the gear lubrication things. So here is the story, its called a garudder. I don't remeber the team that was passing them out, but they were by far the coolest thing I ever got in florida. When our team got them we couldn't figure out what the heck they were so we asked our engineer and he explained to us for a good 10 minutes or so how they worked. With the 1 offset tooth on the gear, each time it moves it leave a void to be filled. When it is filled with oil, it acts like a pump to move the oil down the shaft and out the other end. Those things were amazing me and my friend still have them on our key chains to this day.

Oh yea and I wanted to ask Tenley(Team238-aholic) what she wanted cozzies for? ;-) Everyone should talk to her about the whole trading shirts thing too. How many Shirt do you have from our team?

Re: gear oil pump things
 

BERT was handing them out. From what I remember, they said it was the only thing they got from there sponser two years ago.

Koozies are to keep your Mt.Dew cold obviously!!!!

Oh...Shane i think i have like a gazillion Team 60 shirts and a hat :D

ahhh thats what I figured, just had to double check :-)

i was just studing for some test, and it hit me... the one thing that most FIRST regionals have are some form of a party. yeah, sometimes the party fails, miserably, but why not give out something to help get the party started? like, ummm.... like....

well, thats about when i started to study again....

glow sticks? i don't know, but the concept still stands...

Re: what about a tree???
 

:D Trees are good.. Very very good.. Don't you ever listen at our spirit meetings.. Hrm.. ;)
anyways.. yeah..

:yikes: Here at brazil , we will be very glad if you gave us spalding basketballs . hehehheheheheheehe.

I was thinking....exorbitantly large amounts of cheese?

socks
 

I say team socks!!! lol

i say team bmw cars
:D

I remember last year some team gave out twigs with their team name on it

Puppies......


Nuff Said

Aloha!

This is what our team (#368 ) gave out over the past three years:

2000
Hand-crafted wooden dolphins
2001
Hand-crafted Hawaiian helmets
2002 (this is where we got tired of making stuff)
Buttons and chocolate covered macadamia nuts
Nats
Chocolate rocks and buttons

A couple of the coolest gifts received last year the barrel of monkeys key chains and the puzzle game from the Beach Bots. We don't know what to give out this year..... mouse pads or stickers anyone?

-Li-Anne

Time is better spent making a robot rather than stuff to hand out. Best of all, of course, would be making a robot that makes this stuff for you.

Wow, those are really cool stuff that you're giving out :)

I like the idea of wooden dolphins though, maybe you should do it again. With bribery, who needs a top-class robot :P

Yes, team 368's Hawaiian helmet handouts were great! Probably my favorite of all the things I've gotten at the competitions.

We gave out Barrel of Monkey keychains last year and they seemed to be a big hit (team Delphi gave us the Best Handout award last year at nationals). But, alas, we are unable to do so this year as they cost WAY too much money and considering the current economic recession, our lack of a NASA grant this year, and the lack of district funding this year, we are not looking to spend beaucoup d'argent.

We are still deciding this year what we are going to give out, but like my teammate pointed out, we are thinking bananas.

(If you didn't know, we tend to go ape over our monkey theme; each team member even carries a monkey with them at competition and we tie everything into monkeys. Our new award for team member of the day: Ape du Jour).

hehehehe, our team was playing with those the other day at one of our meetings....they are great!!!!

vibrating bulls
 

our team this year might be giving our a limited number of vibrating bulls...little stuff bulls with a string anf when you pull the string the bull vibrates... but according to the financial status :yikes: ...things don't seem good... probably we are just going to give it to each team leader/repsresentative then.....buttons are a have-to though.:cool:

we are considering team aluminum barstock.

3ds max 5 - Full Edition

Team 521 gave us a Tape measurer/leveler, we use it alomost everyday too cause we broke one of our tape measurers and two is not enough.

*shudder*
 

really?! you arer really going to give out those?

Chia Pets and Miracle-Gro

well i think i will go with the:
1)slinikeeesss(that would be cool:D)
2)the bmw cars(hey, y not:p)
3)and smores :D

we're going to give away Free Homework Passes.

and blankets and cots.

some team gave us shop rags. we use those every day.

My team gave out little mazes that we made in our machinest's shop! they were really cute and you like gave them all away really fast but we wanna make a lot more this year.

MOXIE!

nice nice
 

that seems fun for the member and non-members haha add some fun into robtoics eh? [ not that there wasn't allot already]

i think someone should give out WD40, alot of teams would use that:D

That wouldn't be really original, but if you label something on it, that would be pretty darn original....

I'd raid my nearest radioshack and get honda civic zipzaps and put a team logo on it, and give 1 to each team or something, a great way to waste money...

By far the coolest thing I got was at the UTC regionals last year and got these wicked cool tapemeasures/levels (originality) and caribiners(just plan cool and useful) :yikes:

interesting
 

one of the collest things i got was chocolate from this hawaii team... the chocolate are like pebbles... it looked pretty cool.

Yah our team got a couple of those tapemeasurers too, they rock

They were giving those tapemeasures out like crazy I must have like 10! I remember having tapemeasure races in the pits for pins:p

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this... but hacky sacks would be cool.

I'm not talking high quality, just Sipa Sipa's or something with the team name written on it. Could be cool. *nods emphatically*

Hundreds and Hundreds of leis.

Aloha!

This year my team is thinking about giving out red and black masks

I hope everyone realizes that giving away stuff is illegal this year. The only thing that is allowed is pin trading. Read the site info documents if you don't believe me.

The site says that you just cant give away food i thought? :yikes:
P.S. It is only illegal if you get caught!

That's how I remember it.

easy question

LIGHT UP PENS OR GLOW IN THE DARK STUFF

yep
 

yeah those are pretty nice

i got this necklace from this team that glowed in th dark.. it was soo cool. at night you oucld see me with green beads around my neck.

Nope, it says teams cannot give away "products"

huh
 

products? wha?