I’m a huge fan of novelty items. Currently, my office is adorned with miniature rubber ducks, librarian action figures, small stuffed animals, and other cute-funny-quirky trinkets. These make great conversation pieces and delight others, as well as amuse me.
I’ve found that “novelty” is often used as a catch-all term for miscellaneous items that don’t fit into traditional categories of toys, games, and dolls. For example, practical jokes, magic tricks, souvenirs, and licensed products are considered novelty items. Some manufacturers, such […]
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RPGs and D&D: Learning from the PlaGMaDA Papers
I am a self-professed nerd. I blame (or should I say credit?) my parents, whose family vacation plans alternated visits to educational destinations such as Colonial Williamsburg, Gettysburg, and Washington, DC (No cruises to Aruba or trips to ski resorts for us, thanks. One spring break, my dad took my two brothers and me to a coal mine.) I devoured stacks of books from our town library each week—after completing my homework, of course. My school’s honors program generated plenty […]
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Rock On, Gary Dahl
Staff at The Strong passed around several emails this week noting the passing of Gary Dahl, inventor of the Pet Rock, a wildly popular fad from the mid-1970s.
In 1975 Dahl, a California advertising man, dreamed up the notion of a Pet Rock and shipped it to a San Francisco gift show that August. His idea was so absurd, everyone had to have one. A Pet Rock was nothing more than a smooth stone from San Rosarita Beach in Mexico that […]
Scrabble: Oldest, Newest, Biggest, and Smallest at The Strong!
The National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong inducted Scrabble in 2004. Since then we’ve made efforts to collect many different versions of the famous “scrambled word game.”
Oldest
Visit The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame web page for Scrabble, and you’ll learn that unemployed architect Alfred M. Butts invented the game during the Great Depression. Butts first called his game Lexico, and later Criss Cross.The Strong holds one of very few known copies of the Criss Cross game board. […]
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Under Scrabble’s Spell
ZA is a perfectly good word. You know, like PIZZA. While you probably wouldn’t use (or eat) ZA in a formal social setting, it’s a two-letter word that might help boost your next Scrabble game. Surprised that ZA is a legal word? Don’t be. The entire world of Scrabble terms can be pretty surprising. From the first word (AA) to the last (ZYZZYVAS), the Scrabble dictionary overflows with the uncommon and plain old bizarre words that high-level Scrabble champions apply […]
Screen-Play: Succession Planning in the Playroom
When I leave The Strong this week after almost seven years, a shiny, new collections manager will take the helm. I feel like the well-worn toy Margery Williams describes in The Velveteen Rabbit who becomes Real when the Boy loves him and when the nursery magic Fairy sets him free. Except for the trials of becoming Real, the Rabbit’s greatest anxiety is being forgotten or replaced. And here I am, undergoing the process willingly when so many toys are not […]
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Glow-in-the-Dark Toys
As a kid in the late 1970s and early 80s, glow-in-the-dark toys fascinated me. During the summer months, my friends and I would play outdoors as much as we could. Even after the sun went down, we tried to cling to every moment we had to play. Toys that “lit up” in the dark furthered our cause and glow-in-the-dark Frisbees became especially important to us during the evening hours. In the colder and darker months, we would head over to […]
Four Dolls, Three Bears, Two Bunnies, and One Plastic Guy: Books about Play Pals
As Director of Libraries at The Strong, I acquire scholarly books on the study of play for the Brian Sutton-Smith Library & Archives of Play. Although tracking down weighty academic tomes is quite fulfilling, I would be dishonest if I said that selecting children’s books for the Grada Hopeman Gelser Library didn’t liven up my job. The books available for check out in each museum exhibit are selected to complement and enhance the theme and subject matter—from Where the Sidewalk […]
The Vacation: Typically American?
We think of “the vacation” as a typically American invention. The trip to the beach in summer, the fall color tour, the week at the ski resort in winter, and the excursion to the theme park during Spring break mark American calendars and give an exuberant rhythm to the year.