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 […]
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Design Matters to Play Matters to Design
Design Play
While play foreshadows culture, design shapes culture. Both have the potential to transform society. For the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1949), play amplifies life. Hence play is necessary to individuals as a life function and to societies as a cultural function, by virtue of its meaning, expressive value, and its spiritual and social associations. Conversely, for other scholars such as American design historian Victor Margolin, designs acquire meaning by shaping the social environments (i.e., habits, practices, lifestyles) where they […]
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Why Stop at Potatoes?
I was walking through the museum recently and passed the table of Mr. Potato Head toys, an area that has always been popular with guests. It was then that I unexpectedly heard a young child exclaim, “Mr. Tomato Head!” At first, I couldn’t stop laughing. I’m not sure if it’s my strange sense of humor, the idea of a dollar store knock-off called “Mr. Tomato Head,” or the image that formed of a family of vegetables with faces à la […]
The Marketing of Cabbage Patch Kids Dolls
Were you one of the kids who was told that babies are found in the cabbage patch? That old folk tale gained additional resonance in the 1970s when what would become Cabbage Patch Kids dolls had their conception in rural Georgia.
Influenced by Martha Nelson Thomas’ Doll Babies, art student Xavier Roberts combined his interest in needle molding with the quilting skills he learned from his mother to craft soft sculptures he called Little People. Roberts’ creations featured a pudgy face […]
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Why I Hate the Term “Kidult”
The toy industry loves a good buzzword and lately the one I’ve been seeing is “kidult.” Kidult is usually used in reference to a specific target audience of adults who purchase toys. Generally, kidults get referenced about specific types of toys that have been increasingly popular with adults that buy toys for themselves, enough to significantly impact market trends. These often include higher end collectible toys, like Hasbro’s Black Series action figures or Barbie collector lines. They also include nostalgic […]
Atomic Play
After the dropping of two bombs in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity’s ability to harvest the potential of nuclear energy became a recurring theme in play. In the beginning, nuclear power seemed like an awesome force that offered great promise, even as it was recognized as perilous and destructive. As time went on, however, its catastrophic capacity began to outweigh its potential for good in the public mind, as fears of global destruction invaded the imaginations of toy and […]
A Brief Jewish History of the Toy and Game Industry: The United States
The Toy and Game Industry in the U.S.
The U.S. toy industry, for obvious reasons, doesn’t have hundreds of years of history extending before the industrial revolution that Europe experienced. Before the early 1800s, if you were a child of wealthy parents, you likely had toys purchased from overseas for you or perhaps purchased in one of the new-fangled “department stores” in a major city. If you weren’t so fortunate, the few toys and games you most likely had were “folk […]
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A Brief Jewish History of the Toy and Game Industry: Nuremberg, Germany
Many people know how much impact Jews and Jewish culture have had on entertainment industries like film, television, and comic books. But Jewish designers, entrepreneurs, and inventors have also shaped the world of toys, games, pinball, and video games, and the products of their careers are a huge part of the collections of both The Strong museum and the childhoods of millions in the U.S. and around the world. Those careers go back to the early days of the industrial […]
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The Top of Its Class
On November 10, 2022, the top was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame along with Lite-Brite and Masters of the Universe. In the runup to the induction, the primary comment I heard about the top ran along the lines of, “What?! You mean the top isn’t already in the Hall of Fame?” That reaction underscores just how universal and timeless the top feels even to people in our highly technological era. It’s definitely a toy with a lengthy […]