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There was almost as much bull floating around the exhibit hall at Faulkner & Gray's Advanced ATM Conference '99 as there was outside on the sidewalks of Chicago, where hundreds of fiberglass cows --transformed into one-of-a-kind bovines by paintbrush-wielding artists -- have captured the fancy of natives and tourists alike. (See for yourself at Art Cows Chicago). The cows were a particularly fortuitous coincidence for the fun-loving guys from Max International, one of the exhibitors. Perhaps because their primary product -- receipt paper rolls -- is kind of ho-hum, they feel compelled to camp it up. Their company is located on Dairy Road in Lancaster, Pa. -- and they milk the cow shtick for all its worth. In my book, the guys had the coolest give-aways -- t-shirts, boxer shorts and stickers emblazoned with the "Moos Brothers," two hipster cows wearing shades, ties and fedoras. Continuing the Blues Brothers homage, sales manager Thomas Umenhofer and sales rep Patrick Burke donned shades and hats and pranced through the aisles during a (mercifully) short musical interlude. For Burke, the Advanced ATM gig sure beat the time he actually wore a cow suit in the line of duty. "The udders were a little awkward," he explained. They also wheeled out the "cash cow," a money machine with a cardboard cutout of a heifer, and invited greedy attendees to grab at bills. I got a buck, and so did everyone else around me -- although the guys assured us there was a hundred dollar bill somewhere just beyond our grasp. I'm telling you, that taco-chomping chihuahua could take a few lessons in marketing from the Max International boys. I'm a sucker for promotional merchandise, so a good part of my time in the exhibit hall was spent trolling for freebies. As I mentioned earlier, my favorites came from the Max International. Honorable mention goes to the refrigerator magnet from Woody Alderman at Atlanta Computer Group. Not so much for the magnet itself, but because it was encased in a cute little cardboard gift box. Woody also had some cool t-shirts. After I emptied my duffel bag at home, my husband went straight for the handy mag light from Software Earnings Inc. and the yoyo from WSF Financial Corporation's ATM Management Solutions (he's a kid at heart). I think he's jealous because he can't wear the boxers. They're a "youth large," the size that seemed best suited to my scrawny hips. I loaded up on letter openers, pens and Post-It notes (you can never have too many), but passed on some of the other stuff -- coffee mugs, for instance. Because my husband and I are coffee addicts, we've been "gifted" with numerous mugs over the years. It's gotten to the point where we sneak mugs into our friends' homes and discreetly slip them onto a table when no one's looking. Though not officially sanctioned show merchandise, I saw plenty of those impossibly tiny Nokia phones and tins of Altoids. The "curiously strong mints" were just the thing for schmoozers who liked to lean in close. One manufacturer, Greenlink Technologies Inc., even rigged up a temporary stand for an advertising topper by ingeniously manipulating an Altoids tin and duct tape. Speaking of advertising, every ATM on display featured some kind of a product geared toward advertisers, from full-motion video clips (at Diebold and Tidel) to a revolving plastic cylinder mounted atop a machine at NCR. "That's full-motion, all right," said one wag of the NCR topper. "Three-hundred and sixty degrees." Two of the most well-attended presentations, by Barry McCarthy of Wells Fargo Express Banking and Don Jarecki of EDS, focused on ATM advertising. But that's another story...