Toy and game inventors deserve their time in the spotlight, according to the annual TAGIE (Toy and Game Inventors Expo) Awards. Bestselling books and hit songs earn authors and singers publicity as well as financial rewards. But create a million-selling toy or game and practically no one knows your name. The TAGIE Awards honor the people behind the playthings, celebrating their creations and the fun they’ve brought to our lives.
A few weeks ago, Nic Ricketts, the museum’s games curator, and […]
The excitement builds around the museum every autumn as we lead up to the induction of new toys into the National Toy Hall of Fame. This year, people from all over the country sent us hundreds of toy nominations, each one making the case that their favorite toy should earn a place of honor among the forty-one classics already inducted. No coordinated nomination campaigns emerged this year like 2008 when I heard from tens of thousands of Thomas the Tank […]
Continue Reading about Best in Class: Game Boy, Big Wheel, and the Ball
I’ve got my Halloween candy ready for the trick-or-treaters and a plan for how I’m going to decorate my front door with construction paper bats, but it was still a bit of a surprise to arrive at the museum this morning and find half my colleagues dressed (tastefully, of course) for Halloween. I should have expected it—Halloween’s become a big deal for people of all ages.
When I was growing up, an unspoken rule said that you were supposed to drop […]
You might not think of museum curators as showoffs, but we are. Personally, I love speaking in public and appearing on TV. However, the type of showing off that curators like best is the kind that involves sharing our collections with the world. Sometimes we show off our collections in museum exhibits or at educational events, but neither can display the thousands of great collection objects we want to share.
So I’m extremely excited to announce that the museum’s collections can […]
It was a sunny August day when the Strong curators rolled into the little town of Arcola, Illinois. Dominated by its towering grain elevator and surrounded by endless fields of corn and soy beans, Arcola is the birthplace of Johnny Gruelle, the artist and author best known for creating Raggedy Ann & Raggedy Andy. Our destination? The Raggedy Ann & Andy Museum, of course.
Founded a decade ago by Johnny Gruelle’s granddaughter Joni and her husband, Tom Wannamaker, the Raggedy Ann […]
Maybe you think that I mean “research about roller coasters,” but you’d be wrong. Sometimes, when you work as a curator at the National Museum of Play, you need to put down the scholarly books about play and head out to do a little hands-on research. There’s nothing like ratcheting up the first steep incline of a roller coaster and then screaming down the drop on the other side to prove what’s fun about amusement parks.
When I want a quick […]
Donald Trump never knew how close he came to competing with me-and not because I wanted to play a boss on reality TV. No, the truth is that, as a kid, I dreamed of making it big in the world of high-profile architecture and real estate development. If things had worked out differently, I might have ended up going toe-to-toe with “The Donald” instead of becoming a museum curator. But show me a Kenner Girder and Panel construction set, and […]
Excitement was building at the start of November as we prepared to induct three new toys-the baby doll, the skateboard, and the stick-into the National Toy Hall of Fame. I’d studied up on the toys’ histories, gathered my anecdotes, and felt prepared to explain to anyone who asked the all compelling reasons why they should join the 38 classic toys already in the Hall.
But I didn’t quite expect the intense media and public response to one of those toys. You […]
The number one question around my school as Halloween approached was always, “What are you going to be this year?” Your Halloween costume–and your one-night-only alternate identity–was something to be weighed carefully and debated seriously with your friends. But, for Halloween night itself, an equally important question to ponder was, “How are you going to collect your candy and haul it safely home?”
Through the years, trick-or-treaters have used various sorts of bags and buckets to gather their goodies door-to-door. The […]
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