In case you missed the media blitz, on November 10, the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong announced its 2011 inductees: the dollhouse, Hot Wheels, and the blanket. If you read my early November blog, you know that I thought the puppet, one of the 12 finalists for this year’s induction, was a…
I grew up in a world without LEGO minifigures. I received my first set of LEGO bricks as a Christmas gift in 1973—a wide, white box full of flat, green “grass” pieces, primary-colored bricks, and potential. I constructed houses with doors and windows that opened and closed. I built cars, both the ones illustrated on…
Some folks have reported visions of sugarplums recently—I’ve worked so closely with museum artifacts that I’m hearing their voices. Call me the Toy Whisperer or just plain loopy, but I listen when the museum’s toys and games talk about their New Year’s resolutions. The artifacts have some ambitious goals for 2012, but this doesn’t surprise…
I was eight years old in 1968 and, like many of my friends, I played with toy cars. That year, Mattel introduced toy autos called Hot Wheels. Unlike the toy cars before them, Hot Wheels rolled really fast either downhill or with a touch of a finger. Accessories such as track sets and collector cases…
My three younger siblings and I loved playing outside and going on adventures in our large backyard and adjacent woods. But, when bad weather kept us stuck inside, we turned to board games—Scrabble, Monopoly, Candy Land—or, much to my brother’s dismay, hours of playing with Barbie. I can’t remember a time when my two sisters…
Before I joined the Collections Team at The Strong, I worked as a host on the Guest Services Team. I cannot begin to count the number of times I overheard a museum visitor point at a Barbie Dream House, a Lionel train set, or any of the thousands of artifacts on display, and exclaim, “I…
Imagine the Oscars for toy and game inventors—with a glamorous gourmet meal. That provides a good picture of the Chicago Toy and Game Group’s annual Toy and Game Inventor Expo (TAGIE) awards presentation dinner in November. The Strong is a co-sponsor, along with many other significant contributors, of the event which coincides with the Chicago…
In 1960, to celebrate the firm’s 100th anniversary, Milton Bradley Company hired designer Reuben Klamer to create a new game. Looking for inspiration, Klamer turned to the company archives where he encountered one of Milton Bradley’s first games, The Checkered Game of Life. It had been the company’s first best-selling success back in 1860 when…
Playing cards are truly ancient game-playing devices. Their earliest origins are traced to ninth-century China, where people marked leaves with symbols and spots for game play. Most scholars believe that similar handmade playthings also appeared in Egypt and India. In Europe, the first handmade cards showed up during the 1300s, but printed decks arrived in…
Excitement is building around the Strong as we lead up to this year’s induction of new toys into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The toys in this year’s slate of 12 nominees demonstrate all the qualities necessary to earn a place of honor with other classics. Each finalist has the longevity, recognition factor, and…
