Your hands are shaking as you fumble with the small, plastic pieces, eyes scanning the red board for the hole that matches the shape clutched in your fingers…
The tick-tick-tick of the timer is drowned out by the pounding of your heart in your ears…
You know it’s coming but cannot stop yourself from jumping when the timer stops ticking and BOOM! The game board pops up, launching all the pieces into the air and onto the floor around you.
You breathe a […]

Continue Reading about Playing to Conquer Fears and Tame Anxiety Published on:
November 4, 2022

Ralphie: “No, no! I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!”
Santa Claus: “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.”
This iconic scene from A Christmas Story—Ralphie blurting out to the department store Santa that what he really, really wanted for Christmas was a BB gun—maintains icon status because it is universally relatable. There are toys that kids wish for with such passion that they can think of nothing else and cannot be dissuaded from with logic or reason. […]

Continue Reading about Elevators and Electricity: The Toys I Always Wanted Published on:
October 21, 2021

“Barbie quite simply changed my life.”
Many of us can say that, in one way or another, our experiences playing with Barbie had lasting effects on our lives. For me Barbie provided a venue for my daydreaming and storytelling. For others Barbie might have been more of a double-edged sword: inspiration that came exclusively in hourglass measurements. Carol Spencer’s life, however, would not have been the same in any way without Barbie.
Spencer grew up making paper clothes for her paper dolls […]

Continue Reading about The Life-Changing Magic of Sewing and Barbie Published on:
April 30, 2021

“Only boring people get bored.”
This was my mother’s retort every time I told her I was bored. Like, so bored. Like “roll your eyes and sigh and flop down on your bed in exasperation” bored. When toys, TV, and friends fail you, it feels like the end of the world. Most of us have not experienced that uncomfortable feeling of boredom in our adult lives very often. There has always been something to do, something new to see (even if […]

Continue Reading about I Hope This Blog Bores You Published on:
January 14, 2021

There are five laws of library science, penned by S. R. Ranganathan in 1931:

Books are for use
Every person his or her book
Every book its reader
Save the time of the reader
Library is a growing organism

The fourth law is easily glossed over, but without it the other laws could not be obeyed. “Save the time of the reader” means, at its core, “make things easy to find.” Librarians have spent hundreds of years refining classification systems, standardizing subject headings, and embracing new […]

Continue Reading about Digitizing and Preserving Toy Trade Catalogs: The Sacred Duty of the Librarians of Play Published on:
June 19, 2020

It feels so long ago when I last wrote about domestic hobbies as play. It was indeed a different world—if we told our past selves what our lives look like now, we wouldn’t believe ourselves.
But what was true then is still true today: the calm attained when lost in the flow of an activity like sewing or knitting is a powerful and addictive, and a welcome respite from daily worries. The finished products of our craft are a testimony to […]

Continue Reading about Domestic Hobbies: Flattening the Curve from Home Published on:
April 20, 2020

In 2018, The Strong received a donation of thousands of artifacts, including first-edition strategy and simulation games, wargames, and role-playing games from Darwin Bromley, co-founder of Mayfair Games. The artifacts constituted the single largest gift the to the museum’s collection and will help scholars understand the importance and influence of a transitional era in games, charting their effect on the development of contemporary examples and on video games.
Darwin Bromley began playing and collecting games with his brother, Peter, […]

Continue Reading about Armchair Generals Past, Present, and Future: A Short History of Wargaming Published on:
January 1, 2020

Get out your library cards and alert your book club! With three new inductees to the National Toy Hall of Fame in November, it’s time for another edition of Toy Stories: Tales of the Games and Toys We Love. Last year, I recommended books about five Toy Hall of Fame Inductees and their inventors. This year, dive into four more “old-timers” and one new inductee with this fresh reading list!
Jump Rope, Class of 2000

For generations, American girls have spent their […]

Continue Reading about Even More Stories from the Toy Hall of Fame Published on:
May 17, 2019

At the turn of the 20th century, the toy market in the United States relied heavily on European imports—only 30 percent of the toys sold were produced domestically. Retailers and salesmen depended on buyers who traveled abroad for goods and news of industry trends. In 1902, a group of American toy companies sought to change the status quo, stationing themselves in a lower Manhattan hotel for the month of February to entice toy buyers with American-made products as they departed […]

Continue Reading about Filling a Long-Felt Want: The Origin of Playthings Magazine Published on:
January 4, 2019