Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong Archive

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

In Will Wright’s game design documents for SimCity (1989), he wrote on his graph paper pad, “Interface?” Around the word, Wright drew a box, as if to highlight it. On the rest of the page, there are a random assortment of notes: “Fixed / Mobile Cursor,” “Navigate / Edit / Tool Select.” On the page, Wright also drew a series of arrows that show early design possibilities for the buttons used in SimCity to rotate buildings or move […]

Continue Reading about Switches and Screens: Researching Video Game Interface Design Published on:
November 2, 2018

Since their inception in the early 20th century, comic books have been synonymous with American youth and playfulness. The colorful, action-packed stories in the pages of comics translated into creative play in the backyard with capes and masks and into elaborate worlds scaled to the action figures on the playroom rug. As comics and action figures evolved, lines became blurred: which came first, the comic or the toy?
In most cases, the comic precedes the toy: kids get hooked on the […]

Continue Reading about Which Came First—The Comic or the Toy? Published on:
October 12, 2018

My first library card was a small rectangle made of royal blue cardstock, with the handwritten number “9555” in the top right corner. This very valuable document allowed me to check out up to six items at a time from my town’s library. Ever the opportunist, I always checked out the first six books that I picked up, knowing that I could come back anytime (!) and swap them for a new batch. This method of binge-reading let me plow […]

Continue Reading about Not Just Fan Fiction: The Allen Hammack D&D Collection Published on:
October 5, 2018

In October 2017, I had the chance to be at The Strong National Museum of Play as a research fellow collecting data for my Dolls in Focus project aimed at revisiting and expanding the findings of my previous linguistic investigation on dolls’ language. Surprisingly, what I thought would primarily be an exploratory incursion into dolls’ universe from an academic perspective turned out to be a rather touching and personal experience that allowed me to revisit my own childhood memories.
For a […]

Continue Reading about Dolls in Focus Published on:
September 21, 2018

If you’re one of the more than half-million visitors to The Strong museum each year, you may have spotted the gallery wall about the life of founder Margaret Woodbury Strong en route to the admissions desk (and later, when you mosey back over to the food court). The museum in its current state grew out of the original collections of dolls, dollhouses, and other playthings amassed and cherished by Margaret Woodbury Strong during her lifetime. Simply put, without Margaret, there […]

Continue Reading about A Museum is Born Published on:
July 24, 2018

Get out your library cards and alert your book club! As far as we’re concerned, National Toy Hall of Fame season never ends, making it a fine time for another edition of Toy Stories: Tales of the Games and Toys We Love. Last year, I recommended books about 11 Toy Hall of Fame inductees and their inventors. This year, dive into four “old-timers” and one new inductee with this fresh reading list!
LEGO, Class of 1998
Named “Toy of the Century” in […]

Continue Reading about More Stories from the National Toy Hall of Fame Published on:
July 13, 2018

In this age of sharing every idle thought online, younger generations might find it hard to believe that publicly documenting one’s own life wasn’t always the norm. The most ancient forms of memory were kept in the oral tradition, and the keepers of records were individuals entrusted with the task of memorizing details and transmitting them through recitation to others. As writing systems developed and literacy rose across the globe, the written record became the rule (and oftentimes, entire groups […]

Continue Reading about Oral Histories in the Archives Published on:
June 29, 2018

In the context of toy and sports history, skateboards and skateboarding have had a relatively short existence. Skateboarding might be the phoenix of the sports world: rising, dying out, and rising again. The sport has endured a fair share of highs and lows over the last 60-plus years.
However, before skateboards there were scooters, sometimes known as kick scooters and push scooters. Varied forms of scooters have been traced back to the early 1900s, most of them made from wood, metal, or […]

Continue Reading about Sidewalk Surfing: The Gnarly History of Skateboarding Part I (1940s to 1972) Published on:
June 7, 2018