In the fall of 1950, Charles Schultz’s first Peanuts comic strip ran in the daily newspapers. The comic centered on the disenchanted figure of Charlie Brown and a cast of characters with realistic faults and deep observations about daily life. Schultz introduced Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy, in the third comic strip. Snoopy first won my heart during a meet and greet at Knott’s Berry Farm in California. I was four years old. Now, a few decades later, I understand how […]
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Contentedly Confounded at the World Puzzle Center
Last October, I attended my first convention for the Association for Games and Puzzles International, a community of scholars and collectors, at Italy’s World Puzzle Center. Hosts Roxanne and George Miller converted a castle in the small town of Panicale into a museum of more than 100,000 mechanical puzzles. I fell asleep each night in a room filled with puzzles. Cases of them lined the halls I walked through to get to each event. I even saw a bedroom full […]
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Sap, Smoke, and the Sticky Business of Play
Hello, and welcome. I’m new to blogging and only a few seasons into making maple syrup myself—but I’ve been around the process my entire life. What I didn’t realize until recently is that what keeps pulling me back to sugaring isn’t just the syrup. It’s the play.
I’ve always been a hands-on, take-it-apart, fix-it kind of person. Give me something mechanical, inefficient, or slightly broken, and my brain lights up. Sugaring fits right into that wheelhouse. The constant tinkering, the problem solving, the incremental improvements—it’s all part of the draw. But when I zoom out, I […]
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Children’s Literature in The Strong’s Collections
Where can one find a good children’s book in The Strong Museum? The answer is almost everywhere in the museum’s two separate libraries—the Grada Hopeman Gelser mini-branch that is part of the Monroe County Library System (MCLS) and the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play. Both libraries are full of old and new children’s books. Why might that be? Well, children’s literature is a way of learning through the playfulness of storytelling, a major avenue of artistic expression, interacting […]
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Exporting the Dreamhouse: Barbie in South America
By: Eva Maria Rey Pinto, 2025 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow
Ever wonder how America’s sweetheart snuck into every corner of the Americas? In 1974, Mattel’s founders, Ruth and Elliot Handler, resigned after financial scandals and IRS investigations. This sparked a crisis lasting through the 1980s. New leadership pivoted by licensing Barbie to global toy companies, reducing production costs while maintaining profits through local production and distribution, preserving the brand’s success. Given its geographic proximity, the Latin American market held strategic interest for […]
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The $25,000 Pyramid Game Show “Bible”
By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
When the production staff of a game show needs some guidance about what to do, they turn to the bible.
Among many papers recently donated to the National Archives of Game Show History is the bible for The $25,000 Pyramid, as aired on CBS from 1982-88. Not to sound irreverent, but somehow, “bible” is the industry accepted name for an important document that television viewers never see or hear about. […]
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Green with Envy
What are your thoughts about amphibians? Maybe that segment of the animal world hasn’t crossed your mind recently, but I’ve been noticing a surprising number of frogs around The Strong museum’s collection. Frogs have been cropping up in children’s stories for centuries now, from “The Frog Prince,” a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 to more recent books, such as Arnold Lobel’s story Frog and Toad Are Friends (1970), which offers readers a couple […]
All Work and No Play? Fun in the Workplace
Employees at The Strong are fortunate to work in a place that encourages a fun and playful environment. It’s in our mission statement: “Through play, we encourage learning, nurture creativity, promote discovery, and transform the lives of people of all ages.” This applies not only to our approach to the visitor experience, but also to ourselves as we work.
As a member of the Collections team, I get to test games in the Infinity Arcade exhibit once a month before the […]
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Nothing Trivial about It
Many of us feel that we have a particular superpower in our everyday lives. For some, it might be detecting the gas station with best price without using an app. For others, it’s finding the prime clothing item on a markdown rack that’s just your size. Back in the 1980s, my special skill was my ability to retain and retrieve all sorts of factual flotsam and jetsam—perfect for excelling at Trivial Pursuit. For a time, Trivial Pursuit became a standard […]
