My Little Pony invites children in the age-old play of hair grooming, brushing, and braiding. The ponies encourage fantasy, narrative, and storytelling. The variety of figures promotes collecting as a pastime. And, at the heart of it all, the ponies acknowledge many children’s fascination with horses. The continued popularity of the line proves that this brand—pardon the pun—has legs and has earned its place as a 2024 inductee to the National Toy Hall of Fame.
Hasbro based My Little Pony on […]

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December 5, 2024

The Strong recently acquired a collection of more than 350 Grandmother Stover’s miniatures, party favors, and trinkets. The objects in the collection date from the 1950s to the late 1970s and demonstrate American trends in play, gender roles, advertising, and gift giving occasions. 
Advertising executive John Stover founded Grandmother Stover’s during World War II. The company’s origin story was frequently printed with slight variations, but the central element was that Stover became interested in miniatures when he attempted to furnish a […]

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September 26, 2024

Back in 2019, Dr. Sami Schalk contributed a piece to Inside Higher Ed titled “Lowbrow Culture and Guilty Pleasures? The Performance and Harm of Academic Elitism.” The article was in response to Times Higher Education reporter Jack Grove’s tweet, which put out a call to “some scholars who would write for THE about their guilty cultural pleasures/unashamed love for supposedly ‘lowbrow‘ subjects/activities.” Dr. Schalk argued that the uncritical use of term “lowbrow” ignored the biases embedded in such a word, […]

Continue Reading about One Person’s Trash is Another’s Treasure: Garbage Pail Kids, Gross Bears, and Trash Can Trolls Published on:
May 10, 2024

Were you one of the kids who was told that babies are found in the cabbage patch? That old folk tale gained additional resonance in the 1970s when what would become Cabbage Patch Kids dolls had their conception in rural Georgia.
Influenced by Martha Nelson Thomas’ Doll Babies, art student Xavier Roberts combined his interest in needle molding with the quilting skills he learned from his mother to craft soft sculptures he called Little People. Roberts’ creations featured a pudgy face […]

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November 10, 2023

Born in 1914, Dare Wright spent her early childhood with her mother, famed portrait artist Edith (Edie) Stevenson Wright. Edie treated Dare like a companion and the pair often created imaginary worlds through reading, writing, drawing, carpentry, and sewing. Dare loved to read Robin Hood, Grimms’ fairy tales, and The Lovely Garden, and she spent countless hours occupied by her dolls. Following Dare’s enrollment at Laurel boarding school in the fourth grade, Edith purchased Dare a 22-inch-tall Lenci doll on […]

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March 10, 2023

In 1900, Binney & Smith ventured into the school supply business. The company created handy multicolored non-toxic wax sticks in black, brown, orange, violet, blue, green, red, and yellow. Alice Binney combined the French words for “chalk” and “oily” (craie and olea) to make “Crayola.” The crayons hit the market in 1903 and kids snapped them up. Over the years, appealing new colors tracked fashion trends and cultural change.
One of Crayola’s most problematic colors was called Flesh Tint. First introduced […]

Continue Reading about The Importance of Coloring and Authentic Self-Expression Published on:
December 9, 2022

On November 10, 2022, Masters of the Universe took their place of honor in the National Toy Hall of Fame. This is not the first time He-Man, Skeletor, and Castle Grayskull made recent headlines. Mattel Creations just launched a Masters of the Universe Origins He-Man 40th Anniversary Pack and fans who attended the San Diego Comic Con posted the grandiose Eternia play set to social media. Just this past July, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, developed by Kevin Smith, began […]

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November 18, 2022

The Strong recently acquired a few anthropomorphized fashion dolls. A dog with a human-like body and an extensive wardrobe is really something to behold. As much as I admired these dolls, I could not help but to ask why did these show-up in the toy aisle and were they successful?
Giving human characteristics to animals has existed for centuries. Ancient gods were frequently presented as hybridized human-like animals. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as naturalists discovered and classified new species […]

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May 26, 2022

In 1976, scholar Barbara Bader defined a picture book as “text, illustrations, total design; an item of manufacture and a commercial product; a social, cultural, historic document; and foremost, an experience for a [reader/beholder]. As an art form it hinges on the interdependence of pictures and words, on the simultaneous display of two facing pages, and on the drama of the turning page.” I am fascinated by these works of art. Picture books serve as visual and tactile experiences. Many […]

Continue Reading about From the Page to the Playroom Published on:
April 15, 2022