How did you spend the summer after your high school graduation? Though that was a few more years ago than I care to enumerate, some memories spring to the forefront of my mind: feeling anxious and excited about starting college in the fall; working long hours at a family entertainment center (where I was occasionally costumed as a giant mouse…); and spending those last, warm evenings having fun with my hometown friends. I was certainly not doing anything groundbreaking—pretty much […]
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What’s in a Bag?
One of my favorite recent museum acquisitions is a package of 1990s Pink Panther lunch bags. The infamous animated character is playing Panther, an adorable, make-believe arcade game starring himself. At The Strong, we preserve obvious commercial playthings like arcade cabinets and game cartridges, but we also acquire playful artifacts and play-related materials that can assist in contextualizing play in a specific period. As the research historian, I think the artifact helps us capture how video games permeate everyday spaces […]
The Benefits of Risky Play
We’ve recently opened Skyline Climb, a high adventure ropes course that soars high in our cathedral-like glass atrium. Physical play like this is important, not only as part of the museum experience here at The Strong but as a contributor to well-being in general, especially for children. This attraction offers guests more than just the opportunity to test their agility and balance; it also is a playground for building resolve, courage, and confidence. Asking guests to navigate narrow beams at […]
True Grit
Sand may not be running through my veins, but it’s definitely been a significant part of my life for decades. One of my earliest childhood memories involves playing in the backyard sandbox that my dad built. The sandbox wasn’t huge and its wooden construction wasn’t anything fancy, but I spent hours playing in it. Being a kid who loved toy cars, my Tootsie Toy and Matchbox vehicles regularly maneuvered through that miniature sandy landscape and probably spent more than a […]
American Girl Dolls Inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame
Following a visit to historic Williamsburg, Virginia, and a Christmas shopping trip for her nieces, educator and newscaster Pleasant Rowland pondered, “Here I am, in a generation of women at the forefront of redefining women’s roles, and yet our daughters are playing with dolls that celebrate being a teen queen or mommy.” Rowland spent a weekend creating a concept intended to redefine how girls interacted with their playthings, and in 1986, she launched a new line of 18-inch dolls—American Girl […]
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Simulation, Photography, and Flâneurie In Video Games
The once pejorative term “walking simulator” was often deployed to single out video games that bucked the trend of delivering a fast-paced, action-packed, adrenaline-pumping experience with clear-cut rules and goals and instead opted for making video games organized by a thin set of rules and optional tasks in favor of open-ended wandering and exploration. These days, walking simulators show promise as they rise in popularity, signaling an important shift in interest among developers and gamers alike toward nuance, discovery, and […]
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A Gamut of Games: The Sid Sackson Portal
Have you ever wondered how some of your favorite board games were developed? Did the idea spring, fully formed, out of the head of a publishing executive? Or was the game carefully shaped by an independent designer and perfected over years of play-testing, rule changes, and feedback? At The Strong, we’re able to glimpse behind the scenes through the lens of one of the most prolific American game inventors of the 20th century: Sid Sackson. Perhaps best known for Acquire, […]
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Parading Through History
“I love a parade.”
Or at least that’s what the rousing chorus of Harry Richman’s 1932 song proudly boasts.
Barbara Streisand shares similar enthusiasm in the popular 1964 musical (and 1968 film adaptation) Funny Girl while belting out the now iconic song “Don’t Rain on My Parade”. The song has continued to experience popularity in the zeitgeist in the decades since, with a particularly memorable (albeit brief) rendition by Robin Williams in the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire.
So, what makes parades so popular? […]
Can a Computer Blunder?
“To err is human, to forgive divine” — Alexander Pope
Somebody had blundered. It’s a truism of most organizations and most human initiatives. It’s especially true in wartime. Alfred Lord Tennyson stamped the phrase indelibly into the English language in his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”: Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and […]