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Top 10 Convention Survival Tools to Get Your Favorite Con Goers Through 2011

26 November 2010 by

With the approach of the holiday season comes the start of a new year. A new year filled with conventions, panels, crowded exhibit halls, signings, cosplaying, and travel.

All this fun can get a bit hectic. Thankfully, there are plenty of gifts out there to make surviving the 2011 convention season easier.

Here are the top ten survival tool gift ideas to get your favorite con goers through 2011:

Airborne: On-The-Go Packets

  • Price Range: $5-$10

The convention season is rife with disease germs potential; from airplane rides filled with re-cycled air to crowded panels. So help the
con goers in your life stay healthy during the coming year with a holiday gift of immune system boosting Airborne. Sold in slim, convenient-to-carry packets that can be poured into water bottles or cups.

Vendors Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

  • See Airborn’s Where to Buy Guide to see which of your neighborhood stores carry this health aide

VerMints: everyone-friendly breath mints

  • Price Range: $4-$35

VerMints are certifiably all natural, have no artificial flavoring or coloring, have just 1 carbohydrate per serving, are kosher, vegan-friendly, gluten free, nut free, and are made with some Fair Trade and organic
ingredients. Use them to flirt or just do something about the halitosis of the persnickety person next to you in a panel. Comes in six flavors;
Mint, Wintergreen, Ginger, Cinamint, Chai, and Coffee. Sold in tins.

You can buy them as a six tin variety pack or by the case off the company’s site, or purchase individual tins from stores.

Reviews of these breath mints available at Candy Blog.

Vendor Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

Mini Travel Fans

  • Price Range: $6-$20

Convention halls get hot with all those bodies packed in. A small but powerful little battery-powered fan can go a long way to helping con
goers keep their cool. From Design Go’s micro fan to O-2 Cool’s carabiner keychain fans, there’s a range of easy to carry and powerful
pocket-sized personal cooling devices that make great gifts.

  • Design Go’s Micro FanThe world’s smallest and lightest pocket travel fan. The fan blades “retract”, sliding into the palm-sized body of the fan. Deceptively
    powerful with high ‘blade to wind’ ratio; driven by a 10,000 rpm micro motor. Runs on a single AAA battery. Comes in a few different colors.
  • O2-Cool Carabiner Misting FanMini fan is part of a carabiner for easy carry on a key chain, belt loop, or backpack strap. Foam blades and surprisingly powerful motor.
    Gets great reviews. Comes in multiple colors. Runs on a single AAA battery.

Vendors Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

Cat Ear Headband With Built-in Headphones

  • Price Range: $8-$60

Keeps your convention fan’s hair out of their eyes, doubles as a costume, and has discrete headphones built in so they have one less item
to pack and carry. You can find them crocheted by people or produced by companies.

Vendors and Artists Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

Friend Locator Smartphone Apps

  • Price Range: free-$4

NOTE:For your safety and that of your friends’ be careful when choosing ANY app that wants your personal location information. I’ve evaluated these for general kosherness, so to speak.

It can be frustrating trying to hookup with your friends during a convention. Did they go to that panel after all? Where in the exhibit hall are they? Are they ready to grab dinner somewhere? Well, there’s an app for that. Several, actually. Here are the best iPhone ones (My apologies to those of you, like me, not using an iPhone. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life searching the dozens of mobile app stores. Use these as ideas.)

  • HeyWAY Pro: Hey Where Are You Location ServiceNamed one of The Best 35 iPhone apps of 2009
    on TechCrunch. Lets you keep track of where friends, family and colleagues are. Send alerts with your current location to your approved followers or send “Hey, where are you?” alerts requesting their location. Uses Apple’s new Push Notification Service so notifications and requests for same are delivered even when the app is not running.

    Most important feature, though, is that HeyWAY strictly guards your privacy; you must individually authorize others to see your location, and location updates are sent only when you specifically choose. It is NOT possible to track another HeyWAY user without them choosing to send you a location update.

    Created by NiftyBrick Software

  • iSonar Your friends can follow you in Real-Time. You can use your Addressbook, Facebook friends and other social networks to connect with friends you want to locate.Cool radar graphic; as the radar arm sweeps around, your friends appear as blips on your screen that you can see getting closer or further away. There’s also a Proximity Alarm to warn you if someone you don’t want to bump into gets near. You can switch from the radar view to a Google Map view to see your friend’s position at street level.

    Nifty Waypoints feature lets you save and share specific locations with your friends to prevent miss-communicated meetup points.

    Created by CRemote LLC

  • FriendSpot Free!Let friends know your location by messaging, e-mailing, or Facebooking. This is the best free locator app I found that also lets you connect with any smartphone.You can find the exact spot where your friends are and get directions. See who’s available around you so you can message them to grab lunch. If you loose your phone you can locate it using a friend’s phone. Add friends to track and coordinate with each other. Maps are available in Satellite Mode, Street Mode, or Hybrid Mode. Lets you track up to 500 friends simultaneously. Also has energy saving background processing and an attractive UI.

    Created by Stuck Pixel Studios

Travel Water Bottle

  • Price Range: $2-$30

It’s important to stay hydrated during conventions. And bringing your own water, juice, soda, or ice tea with you is always cheaper than buying on-site. So travel water bottles make a great gift idea.

  • R2-D2 Mini Water Bottle With StrapFigural water bottle looks like R2-D2 and measures 4.7 inches wide by 7.8 inches tall. Holds over 12 ounces and comes with a shoulder strap.
  • Carabiner Water Bottle Clip With CompassA metal carabiner with a strap you can clip any bottled water bottle into. Allows you to attach a bottle to a belt loop, backpack strap, etc.
    Has a built-in compass for helping get your bearings in a crowded exhibit hall. (What, am I the only one with no sense of direction?)
  • Wrist Water BottleHands-free hydration. Hold 8 ounces and sold in a 2 pack; one for each wrist or two gifts for the price of one.

Inflatable Travel Pillow + Blanket

  • Price Range: $15-$30

An inflatable pillow and a cozy blanket, all of which folds up neatly into a carry bag that doubles as a case for the pillow. Some have an
extra pocket on the front to slip in an iPod or store your watch while you sleep. Conventions mean crashing on friend’s floors, long car rides,
trying to catch some Zs on crowded planes or resting up in super-long panel lines. An easy to carry and store pillow+blanket set can make the
difference between comfort and trying to use your backpack as a pillow.

Vendors Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

Camera Extender Pole

  • Price Range: $18-$40

Camera-mounting handheld extenders are a great way to take pictures of yourself at cons. Now you can get those pics of you with favorite celebs, panelists, and friends without either straining your arm or depending on the generosity of a passing Wolverine cosplayer (“Thanks for the Nikon, Bub”). There are a variety of expendable poles that you can mount your digital camera on, and they all collapse down to an easy travel size and are pretty lightweight.

Vendors Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

T-Shirt Autograph Pen – Sharpie Rub-a-Dub® Laundry Marker

  • Price Range: $2-$14

Sometimes you just have to get your t-shirt signed. But pen and marker ink tends to fade, blur, or wash out soon. But Sharpie makes a
great Laundry Marker designed to fix those issues; the Rub-a-Dub marker ink won’t wear out on what you wear, is permanent on cloth, and stays through washing and dry cleaning.

NOTE: When giving Rub-a-Dubs as t-shirt autograph pens you can throw in a bottle of vinegar for extra autograph security; washing with vinegar will “set” ink from pens or dyes into cloth (like when you tie-dye).

Vendors Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

Sandwich Crust Cutters

  • Price Range: $2-$14

Packing good ‘ol PB&J sandwiches is a great way to save money at conventions come lunch time. With these “cookie cutters” designed to shape your sandwich you can cosplay with your lunch. Or theme it to the convention you’re attending. A great gift that lets con goers be thrifty without being square.

Vendors Selling This Convention Season Survival Gear

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