What’s your favorite toy? I had the chance to talk about some of my favorites from the National Toy Hall of Fame with Gerri Willis on The Willis Report not long ago. The Fox Business network brought me to New York City as part of the lead-in to holiday toy shopping and to remind their viewers about classic toys. The segment’s theme, “Best Toys Ever,” felt like a perfect fit since celebrating toys with enduring play value is what the […]
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Molding Minds
If someone placed a lump of clay in front of you, what would you do? Would you immediately be drawn to pick it up and shape it into something? Would you pass it from hand to hand, simply enjoying the tactile qualities? Perhaps you wouldn’t be inclined to touch it at all, maybe you find the idea of sculpting something daunting. Whatever your choice, in that lump of clay lies an important and undeniable quality: possibility.
Now consider how a […]
Screen-Play: NBC’s Community and the National Toy Hall of Fame
Community is one of the most playful shows on television. The comedy about a study group at dysfunctional Greendale Community College not only features unconventional storytelling methods and an innovative visual style, but its characters actually play—all the time. And either its writers have been looking to The Strong for episode ideas, or the toys and games featured on the show are simply as iconic as our experts say they are. In honor of the show’s fifth-season premiere on January […]
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The Toy Experts
Every autumn, The Strong inducts two or three toys into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The process begins by staff examining the thousands of nominations received from the public through the Hall of Fame website and in letters, emails, and phone calls. Museum curators, educators, historians, and administrators then carefully consider the many toys nominated to determine how well each one fits the established criteria for induction. We evaluate each toy for its longevity, icon status, innovation, and the […]
Did You See That? It’s Optical Entertainment!
Is it me, or does there seem to be a renewed interested in 3-D films? Are there any movies that aren’t being released in 3-D? The popularity of the medium recently encouraged me to think more about why visual trickery fascinates so many people. As it turns out, our interest is hardly a fleeting trend. For decades, people have found themselves mystified, intrigued, and amused by a bevy of optical toys and illusions.
For instance, the stereoscope—a popular form of […]
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Rubber Duck: You Make Bath Time Lots of Fun
Bet I can make you smile with just two words: rubber duck.
You did, didn’t you? You can’t help but smile. This will make you smile too. On November 7, the rubber duck—along with the game of chess—joined 51 other classic toys inducted in the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong. How did such a simple toy become the object of such high honors? It is an interesting tail, I mean tale.
Rubber toys first appeared in the late 1800s, […]
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Chess: Champion Names and Championship Games
Do you play chess? A World Chess Federation affiliate recently stated that the worldwide number of chess players equals the number of regular Facebook members and, in the United States, more people play chess than tennis and golf combined. Few sports foster such loyalty and global admiration.
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Tea or Monopoly with Mussolini?
Some games resonate with political history, and so do some movies. I watched Tea with Mussolini, director Franco Zefferelli’s 1999 semi-biographical film, and it reminded me of a game The Strong acquired in 2012. Monopoli (yes, that’s the correct spelling) is a 1937 Italian version from Monopoly’s heyday. What?! Monopoly is all about American-style capitalism and crushing opponents’ bank accounts! How did this happen under the Fascist regime of prime minister Benito Mussolini? The answer demonstrates Monopoly’s popularity in the […]
Playing for “Keepsies”: Marble Play
Night after summer night, my friends and I would gather under the one streetlamp in our small hamlet to shoot marbles, devising our own simple games with the materials at hand. We didn’t know that the game of marbles, in one form or another, has endured for centuries. Even the Romans played marbles. In 1560, painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicted children playing marbles in his masterpiece “Children’s Games.” More recently, marbles have served as playing pieces in the misnamed […]