One of the powerful scenarios that anonymous types makes easy is the ability to easily perform hierarchical shape projections of data with a minimum amount of code. 

For example, I could write the below LINQ expression to query all products from the Northwind database whose price is greater than $50, and then shape the returned products in a hierarchical structure sorted by the Products' stock reorder level (using the "group into" clause supported by LINQ query syntax):

Figure 8

When the above code is run in ASP.NET, I'll get the below output rendered in my browser:

Figure 9

I could likewise do nice hierarchical shapings based on JOIN results.  For example, the below code creates a new anonymous type with some standard product column properties, as well as a hierarchical sub-collection property that contains the orderdetails of the 5 most recent orders that customers have placed for that particular product:

Figure 10

Notice how I can neatly traverse the hierarchical data.  Above I'm looping over the product query, and then drilling into the collection of the last 5 orders for each product.  As you can see, I have full intellisense and compile-time checking everywhere (even on properties of objects within the nested sub-collection of order details on the anonymous type).