Omy Halloween party at MINT Museum of Toys

Thanks to Omy, I was invited to a Halloween party at the MINT Museum of Toys. Since I'd never been to this museum before, but had wanted to for the longest time, I figured that this would be too great of an opportunity to pass up. So I RSVPed in spite of not knowing who else (besides the one friend I could bring along) would be there.

As it turns out, the weather gods conspired against me, and the thunderstorm that evening prevented me from arriving at the appointed hour of 7pm. Instead, I finally set foot at the museum about one-and-a-half hours later, or about midway through the party. As such, now I really didn't know what to expect. The programme at the registration table gave the impression that the organised events had happened earlier, and the rest of the evening was "free and easy".

After getting some food in the basement restaurant, my friend and I headed up to see the exhibits in this five-storey museum. In spite of its many floors, there are surprisingly few exhibits, mainly because the museum is housed in an old pre-war building, so precious space is limited.

There was supposed to be a guided tour of the museum, but I guess we'd missed that, so we just wandered around on our own. There were a lot of old toys, which shouldn't be surprising since this is a museum after all. So there were no Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, no Ben 10, no Pokemon or Digimon or whatever-mon.

In fact, there were no toys from the eighties (as far as I could tell)! So yes, it was quite interesting to see the range of toys on display, but none of them really struck a chord with me that made go "aaahhhh" nostalgically.

As for the party itself, the main action was on the third floor, where there was a buffet dinner and live music. The people there were just mingling about, resembling a party for people who knew one another already. Almost everyone was in costume, though not necessarily in the "toys" theme, unless you count witches and the like.

Okay, I realise that this was a more-or-less "social media" event, and I had been invited as a blogger. But there really wasn't much of that aspect of activities going on. I recognised one other blogger, but then I can't possibly know every blogger in Singapore. But bringing a bunch of bloggers together doesn't make a "social media" event. And just because we're bloggers doesn't mean that we'll bond automatically.

(Of course, I realise that by saying the above, I'll probably never invited to another Omy event. Oh well.)

The party went on after the supposed end time of 10pm, but I and my friend left then. We were given a free mouse pad (!), some bookmarks and postcards (!!). In the end, I felt like this party probably was either not organised for random invitees, or I had arrived so late that all of those formal introductions had already been over and done with, so boo to me.

Instead, the highlight for me was viewing the toy exhibits... and I gotta admit, I'm really glad I went in free of charge.

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