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Next: What to display in the booth. I wanted to use children’s toys that had been recalled in 2007, but I didn’t want them to be accessible to the children at the show. So I asked the show decorators if they had any suggestions. They said they could rent me roman columns. It would be $15 for a 6-foot column and $10 for a 4-foot column. Perfect, I thought – so I told them to send me the paperwork. When I received the paperwork the total bill with delivery and set up was now going to be $108 for the two columns – that didn’t fit in my limited budget. I started to look around the house to see what I could use. I ended up using my ironing board draped with a tablecloth (it worked well).

The final pre-Expo pitfall: My husband emails me on Friday that we are expecting over a foot of snow between Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Would my babysitter make it? Would we be able to get to the show? Would anybody even come to the show? Luckily we woke up Saturday morning to about 5 inches of snow, the roads had been cleared and it stopped snowing – in fact by the end of the show it was 40 degrees and the snow was melting – so the weather did not end up being a factor.

The day of the show, everything worked out well. The balloons would have been too much! I had several "talking points" between the pictures of the recalled toys, my children’s recalled toys and my "10 Toy Recall Myths" poster. I moved the poster of the 2008 recalled toys on to the table, which generated a great deal of interest -- people were surprised to see the Cranium Cadoo game and the Baby Einstein Crib Toy and the remote-control helicopter on the list. People were really surprised by the toys on the list, or they connected with them.

While I didn’t have any giveaways, people thought the pens I had out for the drawing were – so several very basic black pens were taken. I was prepared for that, though.

The results: I had approximately 100 brochures, 50 "Ten Myths" handouts, and 30 business cards picked up (and from my neighboring booths – this number was more reasonable than the 8,000). There were 75 people who registered for the drawing for the free year of service.

Was it worth it? At the end of the day, about 150 to 200 people have now heard of our personalized toy recall notification service and are now aware that toy recalls are an ongoing issue for every parent.

After the show, the Expo people sent us an evaluation and in it they asked how many items we handed out, so next time I know to ask a show coordinator, not how many people attend, but on average how many handouts the booths give away. If I had known it was only 100 to 200, I might have done the Frisbees and skipped the whole balloon fiasco!