Best Pen
Winners: Mercury Computer Systems and Hewlett Packard for their bubble blowing pens.
Runners Up: Compaq, for their gold-trimmed metal pens, and Lucent, for their sleek black pens.
Best Pencil
Winner: Aspect Telecommunications, for their plastic mechanical pencils.
Runner Up: Travelers Insurance, for their somewhat impractical wooden umbrella-shaped pencils.
Best Highlighter
Winner: Texas Instruments, for their erasable highlighters.
Runner Up: United Technologies, for their three highlighter set inside a triangular case, which had won in this category in the previous two years.
Best Sticky Note Pad
Winner: Cambridge Technology Partners, for their odd-shaped note pads.
Runners Up: Raytheon and Bell Atlantic for their large rectangular note pads.
Best Key Chain
Winner: Pervasive Software, for their key chains with red LEDs in them.
Runner Up: Gillette, for their key chains with little pewter razors.
Best Mousepad
Winner: APC, for their "Use it or lose it" cartoon mousepads.
Runner Up: Data General, for their uniquely shaped round mousepad with jagged edges.
Best Flying Object
Winners: Clarion and United Technologies, for their balsa planes, which won this award last year.
Runner Up: Raytheon, for their floppy frisbee things.
Best Toy
Winner: BASF, for their five different sports ball yo-yos.
Runner Up: APC, for their square slinkies.
Best Beverage Container
Winner: BASF, for their ceramic mugs.
Runners Up: General Motors, for their full bottles of water, and Boc Edwards for their belt pack bottle holders with empty water bottles.
Best Candy
Winner: Parametric Technology, for their Lindor chocolate truffles.
Runner Up: Connected Network Backup, for their nice assortment of chocolate.
Most Useful
Winner: Quantum, for their nice looking wooden post-it note holder that came in an equally nice looking box.
Runner Up: Torrington, for their ice scrapers.
Most Useless
Winner: Boc Edwards, for their binoculars that don't magnify much.
Runner Up: UPS, for their flimsy plastic clip things that don't clip very securely.
Most Original
Winner: APC, for their silly putty.
Runner Up: Sun Microsystems, for their magnets with assorted computer words.
Honorable Mentions
Cognex, for their playing cards with plastic cases.
Teradyne, for their "Global stress relief in a box," which appears to consist of a globe stress relief ball and slinky with a map of the earth printed on the outside, even though there was no stress relief ball inside the box.
Avici Systems, for their @ shaped letter openers.
Cutest Company Representative
Before you start getting offended, let me just say that these are my awards, and I can add any categories I want. This one does fit in with the theme of the awards because viewing and conversing with the company representatives is free.
Winner: InScribe Technologies. I had a couple of very nice conversations with Kathy of InScribe during my trips past the many tables.
Runner Up: Fidelity Investments. I didn't see a name tag, so I don't know who she was, and I didn't really talk to her, but she seemed nice.
Most Masculine Company Name
Like the above category, I just felt like including this one, even though it is even less related to free stuff.
Winner: Naval Undersea Warfare Center
Runner Up: Husky Injection Molding Systems
Newspeak Editors' Choice Award
Winner: Lucent, for their small pens with spiral antenna-like ends, which were hidden indide the spiral binding of their brochures.
Most Original Assortment
Winner: BASF, for their playing cards, sunglasses, sports ball yo-yos, plastic coffee mugs, and ceramic mugs. Their table was a very interesting place.
Most Self-Glorifying
Winner: Compaq, for their "The Legion of Q" comic book about underwater superheroes saving the world with the Alpha chip.
Most Over-Hyped
Winner: Microsoft. Their representatives were more agreeable, so I gave them a resume for one of their Koosh things. They seemed to think that their free item was the best in the world, but as usual it wasn't that great.