By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
The National Archives of Game Show History has been fortunate to have many eager contributors donate their prized possessions to be preserved. Among the many treasures that have been donated: set pieces, handheld props, question cards, photographs and slides, tickets, and scripts.
“Wait a minute, scripts? Game shows have scripts?” you might be asking.
Game shows do have scripts, but not in the sense you’re thinking. It’s important for everyone […]
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Collection of Grandmother Stover’s Miniatures
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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Household Cryptids: Infiltrators or Celebrated Guests?
Let’s talk about cryptids. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a cryptid is “a creature that is found in stories and that some people believe exists or say they have seen, but that has never been proven to exist.” What are you thinking of? Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil? These big names are the celebrities of cryptids, but I think there is a subset of cryptids lurking right within our own homes. Though we’d probably never define them […]
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What’s in a (Data) Tape?
Those of us with large data storage needs today are spoiled, with hard drives totaling over 20 terabytes, and options like remote cloud storage offer virtually unlimited storage, if you are willing to pay. Step back to 1998, and things were quite different. According to one source, a 12-gigabyte hard drive cost $349 (the equivalent of more than $650 in 2024).
While 12 gigabytes of storage was large for the time, hard drives were not the only solution for data storage. […]
Birth of the Modern Game Show
By Bob Boden, co-founder of the National Archives of Game Show History
On September 4, 1998, ITV network in the United Kingdom premiered a one-hour primetime game show called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It featured one contestant, sitting across from host Chris Tarrant, answering up to 15 multiple choice general knowledge questions of increasing values, from £100 to a top prize of £1 million. As long as the player answered questions correctly, they could remain in the “hot […]
A Sight to Behold: Dungeons & Dragons’ Beholder Monster
In light of 2024 being the 50th anniversary of the famous tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, it felt right to investigate more iconic monsters from the game. A few months ago, I wrote about Tiamat, the dragon that stands over The Strong Museum’s Hasbro Game Park, so now it’s time to investigate another monster that has been around since the beginning of Dungeons & Dragons. Thankfully, I did not need to look far because right on the cover of […]
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Play in an Icelandic Saga
The forms of play are many and various. Take a look around a contemporary playground and you’ll see all sorts of play: physical, active play; imaginary play; conversational play amongst the children and adults; play with sticks, pinecones, wood chips, and other found objects; daydreaming; and the list might go on. What is true now has always been true in human history, and so when we look at almost any historical source we can find in there evidences of play […]
Preserving Play: Beyond Toys
As a museum of play, one of the largest segments of The Strong’s collection is toys. Of our more than 300,000 museum objects (not including the additional 235,000 items in our library and archives), approximately 178,000 objects are either toys, games, miniatures, electronic games, or dolls. Play itself is an activity or experience, not an object, so when collecting around play, playthings are often the most directly related physical manifestation of play. That being said, not all play involves a […]
Stimulus Correspondences and Game Design: The Complex Case of Simple Simon
On the exhibit floor of The Strong National Museum of Play, somewhere between the Pinball Playfield and Sesame Street exhibits, there is a quote by Diane Ackerman: “Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” This quote resonates deeply with me as a Cognitive Neuroscientist interested in the relationships between brain and behaviour, as well as the numerous ways in which games and science interact. For one very special week in October 2023, I was fortunate to visit The Strong […]
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