Barbie. Love her or not, you have to admit that she is important. Here are three reasons:
1) Even as the competition creeps up, she’s the essential doll. Nearly all American girls own one and the average girl will own between eight and ten before she ages out of doll play. (I know we had a house full.)
2) Barbie is an ageless favorite. She debuted in 1959, after Mattel executive Ruth Handler vacationed in Germany and brought back a naughty tobacco-shop […]
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The Frisbee: Spinning the Truth
Some tall tales are so pleasing that you wish they were true. Not the kind that are just mistakes, like believing that John F. Kennedy was a gifted ventriloquist or that Shania Twain is Mark Twain’s great grand-daughter. I’m talking about plausible old yarns like the one about the young George Washington fessing-up to cutting down the cherry tree. The story isn’t true, but generations of Americans thought it should have been because it fit our Founding Father’s virtues so […]
The Ball: Right Back at You, Jon Stewart
When the National Toy Hall of Fame inducts new toys each year, people notice—tens of millions notice. Clipping services send us news of the news. We find out that people are reading about inducted toys in Johannesburg, Tokyo, Moscow, Karachi, and New Delhi. And in Azerbaijan and Vanuatu. Two Irish news outlets fought over who would cover the story when the Stick was inducted into the Hall in 2008. CNN and the Today Show liked the Stick story too.
This year […]
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Duncan Yo-Yo: Strings Attached
There’s something liberating about the yo-yo. I keep one on my desk for emergencies—like when a balky sentence has me hanging. You’d be surprised at how a twisted paragraph will straighten out and fly right after a few tosses of a yo-yo. In his superb novel, Stop Time, Frank Conroy wrote, “To yo-yo you have to let go.” And indeed you do; thinking too hard will tangle a yo-yo trick just as it can tie up an idea.
The strict parochial […]