You have the unseasonable warmth in New York to thank for the availability of today's Swag Tester prize. We all thought that the Scribblenauts "rooster cap" would make for cozy winter headwear, but since the cold is taking its sweet time arriving here, we decided we ought to pass it along to someone in chillier climes. Plus, the last time I wore it out of the office, I was laughed at and pelted with eggs and sweetbreads. In any case, time to part with this thing.

Honest to goodness, I just realized while typing this that it's also sort of a chicken-related item, which is great because I'm sure you haven't had enough of the chicken stuff on this site. I'm sure that a bucket of KFC grilled chicken isn't the last thing you see when your close your eyes to go to sleep for the night, when you finally think you can have some relief, but then you have dreams about chickens, and they're eating you with coleslaw and a homestyle biscuit, and you say, "You can't get grilled John Teti on a value menu," and they all say "Yeah, you can!" YEAH YOU CAN, they shriek, YEAH YOU CAN!!!!!

But in truth, the hat has nothing to do with roosters. Whew. It's just the hat that Maxwell wore in the game Scribblenauts, you know, the game where you can write the names of things and then those things appear. Wotta concept! Evan Moore and I tested the hat out to see if it matched the brilliance of this incredibly groundbreaking game, which everybody is still playing and never ever got tired of, right?

If you want the cap—one of two caps, actually—leave a comment below telling us why it is absolutely essential for you to have a goofy red hat with a chinstrap. Be creative! Check the last Swag Tester post for all the rules and whatnot, and look for the winners to be posted next Monday.

The results are in: Confessor is the randomly selected winner of the PopCap booty featured in last week's Swag Tester.

Commenter girlgamer21 receives the honorable mention—a random bit of swag and, of course, the usual Crispy Gamer T-shirt—because she used the phrase "bad telly tubby" in her comment:

I saw a guy on the news dressed as the purple telly tubby with a suitcase turns out he was stealing things from people's homes on halloween night. This is no joke this really happened. Bad telly tubby.

There was also a good tale from togmkn, who took heed of my advice to make something up (or did he?):

I saw a little kid dressed up as Batman. It was a decent Batman costume, as far as little kid ones go.

Thing was, I just bought Arkham Asylum and have been having a hard time beating Bane. I just snapped! I was like, "I WILL FOLD YOU LIKE PAPER!!" and charged towards him. But the little tyke threw a batarang and jumped out of the way! I ran into the garage door, stumbled back, and the snot bubble jumped up and kicked me in the nose.

I gave him a Snickers. It was the worst Halloween ever.

Look for a new Swag Tester next week.

Swag Tester is like backwards American Idol. We do the results first, and then we ask the contestants to perform. Yet it works. So first things first: Here are the results from the last Swag Tester. Randomly selected Killstring walks away with a Dark Void travel bag. And This_is_suicide gets a runner-up swag gift, grabbed haphazardly off my desk, because s/he came right out and begged for some swag. Note: That trick will only work once. (Also, This_is_suicide, see the note at the bottom of this post.)

Here's the thing about the good folks at PopCap. They make excellent games—generally well-loved in the Crispy offices, even if Jones turns his nose up at Peggle—but the above-and-beyond part is that their swag is pretty good, too. It seems they put as much creative energy into coming up with swag as they put into the actual software.

I've gathered up all my PopCap treasures, mostly PvZ stuff with a little Bejeweled thrown in. One of you will be gifted with the whole shebang, seen here as photographed in our conference room, also known as The Hall of Inconsistent Lighting.

Clockwise from left:
- PvZ "Ask Me About Moustache Mode" T-shirt
- Bejeweled Twist kaleidoscope
- Real-life Bejeweled jewel
- PvZ Brain Ooze energy drink
- PvZ zombie and sunflower masks
- PvZ "no zombies" sticker
- PC/Mac boxed copy of PvZ
- Plants vs. Zombie Bedtime mini-comic

Here are close-ups of a couple especially choice items:

Moustache T-shirt.

Bejeweled jewel, shaped like a huge cut diamond. Much cooler in person.

I chose the zombie mask for experimentation in the Swag Tester labs. Here are the results:

If you want this hulking pile of swag, leave a comment in the thread below answering this question: What was the best game-related Halloween costume you made/wore/saw this year? And if you didn't see any game-related Halloween costumes, just make something up. This ain't The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour here.

One eligible commenter will be chosen at random to get the PopCap stuff, and another commenter who makes me laugh might get a different crazy prize from the Great Stack of Swag on my desk. I'll toss in some Crispy hats, too, because we have thousands of them in the back room. And we don't even have a back room! You see the problem, then.

Important boring note that I have to put here mostly because of the crazy Facebook Connect stuff that I don't understand: If you don't have a valid email address in your Crispy profile (a group that apparently includes everyone who registered on Crispy through Facebook), we can't contact you if you win! Please email prizes at crispygamer.com if there's any doubt. And This_is_suicide, I don't know if you're a Facebook guy or not, but in any case, we couldn't reach you, so email us. That way, we can send you free stuff.

Final boring note: We can only ship prizes within North America.

Inspiring call to action, so that we don't end on tedious logistical stuff: Let the repartee commence, readers!

Enough of this transpacific travel and caption-contest folderol. We must return now to the serious business of Swag Tester, which in our last episode, granted commenter Confessor the coveted prize of a Modern Warfare 2 pen set and a Crispy cap.

But hey, posting the funny comments on the caption contest was fun, right? So, if you want to be humorous in the Swag Tester comments, let's do that. The winner will still be picked at random, but in the meantime we'll have some laffs.

The prize this time is a "Tesla Air" travel set to promote the game Dark Void. It's coming out in January from Capcom, and I wasn't aware of it until I got this package, so it was pretty effective swag, I guess.

This is also the most useful piece of swag I've ever received. We all were marveling in the Crispy office about the attention to detail on display. It really is quite a good little pack for the plane. Here's a picture:

Clockwise from left: Shoulder bag, blanket, TSA-approved liquid containers, inflatable neck pillow, "hanging toiletry tote bag" (according to the label).

I gave the neck pillow an honest-to-goodness test during my Japan trip, because my old inflatable pillow sprung a leak, and it worked like a champ. But honest-to-goodness tests are not the way we do things here at Swag Tester, so I conducted the REAL test by seeing if my brother's cat Zissou would find the bag an acceptable cat bed.

Yes, I'm becoming a cat person. Blame Jones. Anyway, your Tesla Air pack will be a fresh one, no neck sweat or cat hair on any of the items. And you can acquire it by answering the following question in the comments: "Is there a Dark Void in your gaming life? What is it, and how could it be filled?" Please restrict yourself to responses that do not run astray of any local or federal statutes.

A winner will be chosen at random from commenters who answer the question. (Note: We can only ship prizes within North America, alas.) Will there be a secret bonus surprise gift if I find a response especially clever? I don't know, maybe!

(By the way, if you registered through Facebook, that is super, but it also means we don't have an email address on file for you in case you win. So drop a line to prizes [at] crispygamer.com if there's any doubt that we have your email address. We won't use this address for anything except contacting you if you get a prize.)

Harry Potter is kids' stuff. This week, the Swag Tester wares are a bit more adult. But first, the winner of last week's Harry Potter giveaway: piccolo13! As always, the Crispy Prize Committee should be emailing you in short order. (And for those of you who were rooting for w1ndst0rm, blame the atmospheric noise that generates the random picks at random.org.)  

On to new business. We're giving away a Battlestations: Pacific calendar featuring classic pin-up girls. The calendar goes through March 2010. You may be wondering why I held onto the calendar for so long, given that the game came out two months ago. But after you see Miss June, you will no longer be wondering.

The other half of this week's giveaway is a genuine Zippo lighter emblazoned with an "Island Princess." It is useful for creating fire. This is one of the nicest bits of swag I've gotten in recent memory, and despite the fact that I don't smoke, I am a convicted arsonist, so I hesitate to part with it.

The lighter doesn't have any fuel, so very little Swag Testing was necessary. It doesn't work, yet. So Elise Vogel and I brought the calendar into the lab for more intensive investigation.

Swag Tester verdict: Functional, FOR NOW.

For the lighter and the calendar, comment on this post with your response to the question, "What game has the best fire/lava/hell level you've ever played?" Pretty much every game has one, after all. No wrong answers, winner picked at random and announced in the next Swag Tester. Good luck!

We've got Harry Potter fever at Crispy Gamer! Our body temperatures are elevated to perilously high levels because we just can't stop talking about the moggles and the, um, glipthorps and … Captain Shabadoo with his fantabulous pulsating wand …

OK, I don't know anything about Harry Potter. But perhaps you do. In that case, feast your eyes on this assortment of Harry Potter goods that recently crossed the Crispy transom. Just comment below for your chance to win. And congratulations to rtfm, who won last week's Indiana Jones Mr. Potato Head. The Crispy prize committee will be in touch shortly.

This week's giveaway package includes:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for Nintendo DS. The game is still in the shrinkwrap, so I can't give you any impressions of it. But the cover does feature a photograph of noted actor Daniel Radcliffe. He plays the role of boy genius Harry Potter in the films, I'm told. Also, the back of the game's case encourages you to "Summon the wizard within you." That sounds a little bold to me. Maybe take the wizard within you out to dinner first. Get to know the wizard within you. Then, if the mood is right, you can take the wizard within you home and summon him till sun-up.

A Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince notebook. The front of this notebook features the same picture of Daniel Radcliffe, but bigger. If you move the DS game and the notebook back and forth, it looks like Daniel Radcliffe is coming toward you—as if he will step out of the picture and into your life. But he won't. Give up the dream already. And stop sending those letters. You're giving everybody the creeps.

Harry Potter snap bracelets! There was some debate in the office over "snap bracelets" vs. "slap bracelets." I'm on the "snap" side myself, but whatever you call them, the bracelets have tapped into a rich vein of early ’90s nostalgia around these parts. Still, out of my continuing concern for the readers' safety, Evan Narcisse and I brought the plastic and faux-velvet accessories into the Swag Tester lab:

Swag Tester verdict: Appropriately snappy. Or slappy. Whatever.

Again, for your chance to win, comment on this post with your answer to the question, "What's the best (or least bad) movie-based game you've ever played?" No wrong answers, winner picked at random, etc. We'll contact the lucky recipient with the email address you used to register, so make sure that address works. And we'll never spam you, promise.

The winner will be announced next week. As Gandorf the Archwizard would say, "May the magic be with you!" or something along those lines.