One nice and plentiful freebie is the magazine. There are always plenty of free computer art, game, and animation magazines to pick up. They're a good way to pass the time while you're waiting for your favorite seminar to start.

Even before the main expo floor opened, the suites off to the side were showing off their wares. Into, a provider of internet-based game delivery solutions, had some impressive technology, along with T-shirts, frisbees, and flashing bouncy-balls.

If you're looking for a few hundred PC Gamer demo floppies, you've come to the right place!

Everybody loves toys. Renderware had some unique little plastic clackers. They're cute little time-wasters as you wander about.

The classic trade-show giveaway is the T-shirt, and the shirts at the GDC flowed like gin at Peter O'Toole's house. Fill out a survey for Gama Media (formerly Gamasutra, formerly Game Developer, formerly whatever), and get a free shirt.

Iomega was giving away cute little rear-view mirrors for your monitor, so you know exactly when to kill Windows Solitaire at work.

nVidia tried to destroy the brains of GDC attendees by giving away alien spores. People picking up the spores found larvae quickly working their way through the nostrils and into the brain stem. Ok ok, it's Silly Putty.

Wes from Wordware shows off the contents of the free tequila shooters available to passersby. Later, he filled a super-soaker with tequila so he could fire shots into people from ten feet away. Your intrepid reporter was the unfortunate test-subject and can report that a nostril-full of tequila is not a pleasent experience.

Armies of little rubber toy robots took over Daily Radar. They needed something to take 'em over, because they didn't really have much to present.

PCAlly/MacAlly had a slew of "minitool" screwdriver-keychains.

Now we're getting somewhere! LipSync had plastic masks, pens, rubber lips, and stickers. It's everything the GDC is all about!

A couple of AMD higher-ups model their fine fezzes and sunglasses. The sunglasses were free to all comers, but the fezzes, unfortunately, did not seem to be available..

One of the finer pieces of graft was this cute little cubicle basketball hoop from Intel.

AMD kept the freebies flowing with free beanbags.

Applied Microsystems had cute little plastic flashlights. Unfortunately the light is bright red, so it's pretty useless as a flashlight except for giving morse-code over great distances.

Metal tins of mints were popular this year. These are from Curious Labs, developers of Poser 3D character animation software.

Maya had free T-shirts, they just charged $15 for them. Do they know where they are?

Another provider of content for small devices, Comverse, had little rubber cell-phones to give away. I can think of a thousand uses for these, mostly fitting in the "mayhem" category. Like throwing 'em out of a car at a crowded intersection, etc.

If you live in the state of Maryland, here's your tax-dollars at work. The state had a booth to push employment opportunities there, and they were giving away plastic slinkies to prove it. Nothing makes me want to move to Maryland more than a plastic slinky.

If you're looking for freebies on only the expo floor, you're only getting half of the picture. The job pavilion had some good freebies. Here are some rubber footballs from EA, hot-wheels cars from Havas, calculators and virtual-pets from Knowledge Adventure, and more silly-putty from Konami.

More job-fair graft-goodness. Here's some official Munch's Oddysee Sonar Enhanced Gabbit Juice (ingredients: corn syrup, flavor, color), Premier Search "all your base" T-shirts (sold out instantly), and nVidia bubble-pens.