Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame Archive

Get out your library cards and alert your book club! As far as we’re concerned, National Toy Hall of Fame season never ends, making it a fine time for another edition of Toy Stories: Tales of the Games and Toys We Love. Last year, I recommended books about 11 Toy Hall of Fame inductees and their inventors. This year, dive into four “old-timers” and one new inductee with this fresh reading list!
LEGO, Class of 1998
Named “Toy of the Century” in […]

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July 13, 2018

As a cycling enthusiast, I was a thrill to see a velocipede—an early form of bicycle—in the conservation lab. Pierre Lallement and Pierre Michaux patented the design for the velocipede in 1866 before Lallement moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and made improvements to the velocipede on his own. He also gave license to American bike-builders for variations of the velocipede. These early wheelmen obsessed over different ways to power a bicycle—steam, electricity, or dog-powered locomotion.
Most velocipedes haven’t survived. They were […]

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June 15, 2018

In the context of toy and sports history, skateboards and skateboarding have had a relatively short existence. Skateboarding might be the phoenix of the sports world: rising, dying out, and rising again. The sport has endured a fair share of highs and lows over the last 60-plus years.
However, before skateboards there were scooters, sometimes known as kick scooters and push scooters. Varied forms of scooters have been traced back to the early 1900s, most of them made from wood, metal, or […]

Continue Reading about Sidewalk Surfing: The Gnarly History of Skateboarding Part I (1940s to 1972) Published on:
June 7, 2018

Have you ever had a day when you just want to throw something? Well, it’s probably optimal if you choose an object that is meant to be thrown. Playthings such as softballs, paper airplanes, water balloons, and Frisbees count among the items which get the go-ahead for a wind-up and release. As I mentioned in a previous blog about toys people throw, “Sometimes I like to throw for distance and speed, other times for accuracy. Trajectory, body mechanics, kinetic […]

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January 5, 2018

Historians debate the origins of paper airplanes. Early attempts at constructing flying machines fascinated children and adults alike. The success of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 fostered renewed hope of powered flight and no doubt contributed to the purported invention, in 1909, of the paper airplane. More than 100 years later, on November 9, 2017, The Strong announced that the paper airplane, along with the game Clue and the Wiffle Ball, had joined the elite of the […]

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December 8, 2017

On November 9, 2017, Wiffle Ball took its place of honor in the National Toy Hall of Fame, joining 64 other classic toys and games. Introduced in 1953, the Wiffle Ball represents the optimism of the postwar era and the romanticism of life in the suburbs. Part of the Wiffle Ball’s charm is that it remains relatively unchanged since its introduction. The orange, black, and white Wiffle Ball box today features nearly the same typeface and instructions on how to […]

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November 17, 2017

​Today people find themselves bombarded with ideas, images, and characters from every kind of media. Game manufacturers quickly capitalize on that phenomenon by producing classic games licensed for popular themes. For Yankees fans, New York Yankees Monopoly makes a great gift. Instead of properties, gamers buy and trade team players while circling the game board as a catcher’s mask or a World Series trophy. Tired of the classic Game of Life? Try Game of Life: My Little Pony. What […]

Continue Reading about Scooby Doo as Colonel Mustard in the Graveyard: Licensed Clue Games Published on:
November 10, 2017

Although I sometimes roll my eyes at the new commemorative “holidays” that get added to the calendar, I’m actually delighted to see that November 4, 2017 has been declared the first annual National Easy-Bake Oven Day. I can’t promise that I’ll be sending greeting cards to my friends and family to honor the occasion, but it’s good to know that one of the classic toys in the National Toy Hall of Fame is drawing renewed attention—naturally by way of Twitter, […]

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October 27, 2017

I was a visiting Research Fellow at The Strong museum in July 2017. While at the museum, I researched the history of the toy industry, focusing on the ways in which the main trade journal, Playthings, represented the struggles of different companies to capitalize on the different opportunities the market offered to them. In doing so, I traced the links between intellectual property law and the making of the U.S. toy industry in the early 20th century.
The importance of Playthings magazine for legal […]

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September 27, 2017