What does Valentine’s Day make you think of? Boxes of chocolates? Bouquets of roses? Pledges of undying love? Sure, those are all part of the most romantic holiday on the calendar. On the other hand, from the 1840s into the early twentieth century, Valentine’s Day was also THE occasion to send insulting and downright nasty cards to your circle of acquaintances.

Somehow those proper Victorians took the tradition of sending sweet, heartfelt Valentine cards and turned it on its head. Comic valentines, also known as “penny dreadfuls” or “vinegar valentines,” made up about half the market for Valentine cards. They were amazingly cheap (and looked it) and could be found in variations to suit just about every circumstance. Your looks, your profession, your personal habits—everything was fair game for ridicule. Courtesy of the United States Postal Service, you could anonymously mock, malign, and generally mistreat anyone who’d ticked you off since last Valentine’s Day.

The museum’s collection includes plenty of pretty and sentimental valentines, but it also has its share of comic ones. Hate how someone sings? Here’s a nice rhyme:

When a pig’s getting slaughtered, the noise that it makes
Is sweeter by far than your trills and your shakes;
And the howling of cats in the backyard by night,
Compared with your singing’s a dream of delight.

Seeking vengeance on your butcher? Try:

You’re greasy as the pork you sell,
And tough just like your beef;
Your customers who know you well,
All hope you’ll come to grief.

Think your auto mechanic is substandard?

You’re always working on some car,
Its parts you’re always mixing
Instead of the car, we think your head
Quite badly, needs a fixing.

And don’t forget the opportunity to trash that least-favorite teacher:

Some folks go to college and others go to school
To listen to a teacher act just like a fool.
If knowledge is great riches, then you are poor, indeed,
And words of but one syllable are just about “your speed.”

Whew! I’ve had some less-than-stellar Valentine’s Days in my life, but I’ll count myself lucky that I’ve never been the recipient of comic valentines like these. And if I was ever tempted to send such a nasty note—even anonymously—I’m certain that my butcher would sell me rancid meat or my mechanic would disconnect my brakes! So my helpful Valentine’s Day-shopping hint is to stick to the sweet cards filled with hearts and flowers and leave the nasty ones strictly to the museum’s collection.

Strong National Museum of Play has many historical artifacts that help to tell the story of play in the wider context of American history. One of my favorite posters in the museum’s collection shows how baseball intersected with American history in the early twentieth century.

Baseball was widely recognized as America’s national sport by the late 1800s, and it continued to grow in popularity in the early twentieth century. Two separate major leagues were in place in 1901, and by 1903 the World Series was established. Baseball was here to stay.

Meanwhile, then-president Woodrow Wilson, who had won reelection in 1916 on an anti-war platform, faced the need for American participation in the terrible “Great War” raging in Europe. He and his cabinet knew that American involvement loomed. But how could the government convince the American public that this was necessary? One idea was to create a poster that urged Americans to metaphorically “Get in the Game,” along with their patriotic national symbol, Uncle Sam.

Artist J.C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) designed the poster, commissioned by the Publicity Committee of the Citizens Preparedness Association, a pro-war organization with federal support which also sponsored “preparedness parades” and other nationalistic activities. Leyendecker himself emigrated from Germany at age eight and was approaching the pinnacle of his career in 1917 when he created this work.

The poster just preceded James Montgomery Flagg’s famous “I Want You” image of Uncle Sam, which later became the best-known likeness of the country’s unofficial symbol. Leyendecker’s version, in spite of his baseball bat, is possibly less affable to contemporary eyes than Flagg’s friendlier Sam. But the bat he holds connected him to many Americans, who perhaps then decided that America should “get in the game.”

Sometimes powerful symbols sustain the longest lasting toys. Lincoln Logs, a favorite for nearly a century, is the best example.

We long admired the pioneers for their hard work and ingenuity as they turned the trees of the new world’s forest into simple and sturdy log cabins. The inventor of Lincoln Logs, John Lloyd Wright (son of the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright), designed the toy to resemble the log cabin because he knew how effectively it captured the American mood. The image of the dwelling had served as the logo for successful Presidential campaigns—Abraham Lincoln’s most famously. Amidst the gathering political storm that led to Civil War, the icon helped voters imagine that the homespun orator would bring back simpler, steadier, more resourceful, more self-reliant, and virtuous times.

Over the years the symbol has continued to attract parents, the buyers. But no toy can stay fresh for so long on the strength of marketing alone; it is the technology that makes Lincoln Logs fun. These rounded, notched mini-logs are easily assembled into sturdy miniature cabins that can support the weight of a child. They support the stories children spin, too. The packaging—round to fit round logs—also pictures frontier forts, the essential American outposts. And I even remember how the rage for Davy Crockett—his coonskin cap, and other manly equipment—fueled our imaginations in the 1950s and supported a new enthusiasm for Lincoln Logs.

Curiously, however, the inspiration for the toy was not entirely American. As a teenager, John Lloyd Wright had observed Japanese carpenters notching beams for an “earthquake proof” hotel that Frank Lloyd Wright had designed in Tokyo. During a temblor the resilient structure would sway but not fail.

One more curve brings the story full circle; the son had another and deeper personal reason to choose this name for this toy. Frank Lloyd Wright’s real, given middle name was Lincoln.

Start with a top. It’s simple, cheap, fun, unbreakable, and memorable; its principles, too, serve as the basis for several other toys. Assembled from a sharpened peg with a wheel attached, you spin the top between a thumb and forefinger and then let it go. The spin creates angular momentum that increases the mass of the wheel, or cone in fancier versions. With forces directed outward at a tangent the top balances, magically it seems, on a point. As friction with the air and with the surface slows the toy, it begins to wobble and losing energy, it eventually skitters off.

You can accelerate the rotation and prolong the spin of a top by attaching a string and rolling it out with a flick of the wrist. Contain the spinning top in a frame, and you’ve created a gyroscope. The gyroscopic effect fights your efforts to change the gyroscope’s position. This seems magical too. Scaled up, the toy stabilizes oceangoing ships and steadies space-faring satellites.

If you join two cone-shaped tops together with the points at the middle, you’ve made a toy known in America as the Diabolo. Juggle this conjoined top on a string, and you can work up its speed until it whirrs. Then toss this devilishly delightful toy up, catch it, and let it roll along like a wheeled tightrope walker. Toss it again. Now reverse the tops, imagining them as wheels. Attach them in the middle with an axle between. Fix one end of a string to the axle, the other to your finger, and let it spin out of your hand. When the spinning toy runs out of string at the bottom it will catch and then start reeling itself up to return to your hand. At last! You’ve made a yo-yo.