For some of the more serious journalists, CES is about emerging technologies, hands-on demos and social networking. For me, it's all about the schwag, the mountains of junk companies spend thousands of dollars on in order to draw innocent passersby in. I'll be showing you the best of the schwag I get my hands on each day, with a crowning award ceremony at the end. See the best of what Monday had to offer after the jump.

Total Crap: Sony pulled out all the stops in order to outfit me with a notepad and a lanyard. I'll be flipping them on eBay next week due to the limited quantity.

A pink-and-white themed nano skin, also available in black-and-white (AKA 'cow'). I don't know who gave me this thing and I don't care. I'm betting you don't, either.

Honorable Mentions: I thought Pioneer was pulling a Sony when I sat down to a notepad and pen, but then I found my 256MB pod-shaped flash drive.
Hitachi distributed a decent schwag bag today including an enormous "I Heart Plasma" tee, a folding info cube, an LED pen and a nifty slide-extending 256MB thumb drive. The goodies almost made up for the fact that I had to carry an enormous, shiny shopping bag around the show floor.

Today's Winner: SanDisk takes the cake today for handing out 1GB Sansa C240 MP3 players outside their press conference. They're almost as cool as the Sansa Express cordless players that were announced inside. The mayhem the giveaway created was hard to watch, but the schwag was well worth it. – Karson Thompson

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