Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong Archive

 

Have you ever played hockey with miniature stick-wielding players and a thumbnail-sized puck on a three-foot table covered by a plastic dome? If so, you have probably played Innovative Concepts in Entertainment’s (ICE) Chexx (or later Super Chexx) “bubble hockey” arcade games. First released in 1982, the iconic game is, in part, the work of Ralph Coppola (1948–2018), who, along with business partner Jack Willert refined David M. Barcelou’s initial invention and brought it to market. Over the course of […]

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February 25, 2021

Eva Nwokah, 2019 G. Rollie Adams Research Fellow
Professor, Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio, Texas
 
My current research is focused on how animals in children’s literature are portrayed with human characteristics through what they wear and what they say—in other words, animals that are anthropomorphized. Why do children find that animals speak and behave like humans appealing? This playful aspect of stories encourages children’s imagination, holds their attention with silly images, and has been used by authors […]

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February 19, 2021

Alec S. Hurley, 2018 Strong Research Fellow
PhD Student, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
 
Despite growing up in Rochester and routinely passing The Strong museum en route to the family business on Oregon Street, I failed to take advantage of the museum’s wonderful exhibits and its abundant collections until late June of 2018. Then, over the course of five days leading up to the July 4th holiday, I was fortunate enough to take a break from my doctoral […]

Continue Reading about My Week with Brian: A Conversation with the Collected Works of Brian Sutton-Smith Published on:
February 5, 2021

“Only boring people get bored.”
This was my mother’s retort every time I told her I was bored. Like, so bored. Like “roll your eyes and sigh and flop down on your bed in exasperation” bored. When toys, TV, and friends fail you, it feels like the end of the world. Most of us have not experienced that uncomfortable feeling of boredom in our adult lives very often. There has always been something to do, something new to see (even if […]

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January 14, 2021

Parker Brothers, founded in Salem, Massachusetts in 1883, published more than 1,800 games during its existence. To this day, many of their products—such as Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Sorry!, and Ouija—probably still live on shelves or in closets around your home. Parker Brothers remained a family-owned company until 1968, when it was purchased by General Mills. By 1985, General Mills merged their Parker Brothers division with another subsidiary, Kenner, to create Kenner Parker Toys.
In 1986, Professor John J. Fox […]

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January 7, 2021

Adrienne Shaw, Director, Cultural Analytics Certificate
Associate Professor, Department of Media Studies and Production
Lew Klein College of Media and Communication Graduate Faculty
Temple University  
 

This fall I donated three digital collections to The Strong museum: the LGBTQ Video Game Archive Source Files, the Rainbow Arcade Collection, and the Joshua D. Savage Digital Game Documents Archive. These are part of my ongoing project documenting the history of LGBTQ content in (primarily) digital games. By donating these files, I hope to encourage future researchers to […]

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December 17, 2020

Nolan Bushnell, Shigeru Miyamoto, Ralph Baer, Jordan Mechner, Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, John Romero. These are some of the most recognizable names in the history of video games. They’re also—well, noticeably, all men. Yet, there are obviously plenty of women who have made a huge impact on the games industry—and one of our most recent projects at The Strong seeks to highlight that.
The Women in Games initiative at The Strong began in 2017 as a key program of the museum’s […]

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October 21, 2020

  How do you know if a game will be a hit or a flop with players? According to legend, video game pioneer Atari knew their 1972 coin-operated video game Pong would be a winner because players filled the test game’s coinbox with so many quarters that it jammed up the machine. As any veteran of the arcade game industry will tell you: “The coin box never lies.” But surely there should be more to it than that? In […]

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October 19, 2020

Aria S. Halliday, 2019 Strong Research Fellow
Assistant Professor, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH

On my first visit to The Strong National Museum of Play in February 2016, I came as a Strong Research Fellow. Then, I was on a search for any information about Mattel and its history with Black Barbie dolls. I wondered how and why Mattel created Black Barbies, who was involved in their production, and how those designs were then marketed in ads and magazines. Fantastically, I […]

Continue Reading about The History of Black Barbies: From Playthings to Liberation Published on:
October 1, 2020