Video games have a common—and increasingly outdated—image of appealing primarily to males. This misperception is perhaps due to the tendency of the media to focus on the “triple A” market—high-budget games, produced by established game corporations, that highlight violence and sex to appeal to a straight, male audience. At least one company, however, was aware of the potential for a female market for video games in the 1980s. Atari Coin-Op Divisions Collection, 1972–1999, reveals how Atari conducted marketing research to […]
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Postwar Plastic Playthings: Affordability, Resources and Military Surplus
I first became interested in the increase of plastic in children’s toys through my own daughter’s toys, especially since my undergrad degree was in Environment and Health, with a fourth year focus on Bisphenol A (also known as BPA) in baby bottles. Throughout my Masters studies, I focused on the central question of why we keep what we do, how we make those decisions, and the ways in which we’ve come to value or devalue certain things. I was struck […]
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Following The Bouncing Ball: Tennis for Two…at The Strong!
On October 18, 1958, a curious object appeared at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) during its annual Visitor’s Day. Unlike the static (mainly photo and text) displays arranged to showcase projects from BNL’s different lab divisions, this unnamed object from the Instrumentation Division consisted of a 5½ inch DuMont cathode ray tube X-Y graphic oscilloscope connected to a Donner Scientific Company Model 30 (vacuum tube) analog computer. Upon the small screen, visitors witnessed images of a “net,” “court,” and “ball” […]
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A History of Film-to-Game Adaptations: Why I Play, Study, and (Sometimes) Like Bad Games
In October 2015, I was awarded a Research Fellowship from The Strong. I had access to the library, the archives, the museum itself, and the seemingly endless rows of shelves full of playthings of the past. Both my 14-year-old self and my current 30-something researcher self were in a happy place. My job is to study video games and teach about them—not a bad gig at all, I must admit—and I have been interested in the history and theory of […]
Through the Artist’s Eyes
My love of movable books and of antique toys and games containing the richly colored chromolithographs of the last half of the 1800s brought me to The Strong’s Online Collections. I spent four days “oohing” and “ahhing” over the vast archive of images in the museum’s database before I discovered it was possible to view the actual objects by arranging an appointment or, better yet, applying for a fellowship for an in-depth immersion. Although I learned I was the first […]
From Italy to Rochester, Looking for the Meaning of Play
In November 2015, I came from my home in Turin, Italy, to spend a month at The Strong museum working on my research project, “The Meaning of Toys: Creating and Conveying Knowledge through Playful Artifacts.” I was honored to be granted a Strong Research Fellowship that financed the first half of my stay.
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Nancy Drew and the Case of the Girl Gamers
Recently, debates about women and video games have been making the rounds. The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and the Colbert Report, for instance, have drawn attention to what it can be like for women in gaming communities. They explain that women face a lot of pushback and find themselves viewed as unwelcome visitors in spaces stereotyped as “for the guys.” Along the way, the nature of video games themselves comes under scrutiny—characterized as hyper-masculine, violent, and sexist. In other […]
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Finding Race and Play at The Strong
The Strong’s research fellowship program not only provides an opportunity for scholars to view rare material in the museum’s collection and archives, but it also expands the potential for the study of play in academia. Being surrounded by the artifacts of play with which we all have experiential knowledge helped me realize the importance of studying play objects and children’s culture. Although my research focuses specifically on Mattel’s historical production of Black Barbie dolls, The Strong reminded me why my […]
They’re Gr-r-r-eat! Cereal Box as Serial Docs
Can you get enough of that Sugar Crisp? Does the crunch always give you away? And are Trix just for kids? Cereal slogans have become embedded in popular culture, and even satirized in television shows. Such slogans were made memorable at the time by the cereal mascots that voiced them in animated commercials. However, these slogans were also often splashed across cereal boxes. Lucky the Leprechaun has been promising that his cereal is magically delicious since 1964 (except for a […]
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