And, yet, you still have the drum sticks...and everyone that happens to think highly of you will let a little of that goodwill rub off on the brand that's on your sticks. That sounds like an excellent marketing expenditure, to me.

The best you can hope for from schwag is that most of what you give away doesn't get thrown away, and actually gets used for a few months, or longer. Sounds like this one worked out well. At conferences, you can always tell what the worst schwag is by looking in the trash cans on the way out of the expo hall. The stuff that gets thrown away immediately is utterly wasted; the stuff that makes it into the suitcase and gets back home with someone is the good stuff.