Toys Archive

Is it me, or does there seem to be a renewed interested in 3-D films? Are there any movies that aren’t being released in 3-D? The popularity of the medium recently encouraged me to think more about why visual trickery fascinates so many people. As it turns out, our interest is hardly a fleeting trend. For decades, people have found themselves mystified, intrigued, and amused by a bevy of optical toys and illusions.
For instance, the stereoscope—a popular form of […]

Continue Reading about Did You See That? It’s Optical Entertainment! Published on:
December 6, 2013

The National Toy Hall of Fame hasn’t embraced cuddly toys in a couple of years. Of course I was thrilled to see The Strong honor the rubber duck recently (have you seen my wedding cake?). But it’s the soft, snuggly playthings—the blanket, the teddy bear, Raggedy Ann and Andy—that give me warm fuzzies. These are the toys that comforted us as kids.
Children can’t resist touchable toys. Peanuts fans rarely see Linus without his security blanket against his cheek. Taggies blankets […]

Continue Reading about Creature Comforts: Toys that Soothe Published on:
November 26, 2013

Bet I can make you smile with just two words: rubber duck.
You did, didn’t you? You can’t help but smile. This will make you smile too. On November 7, the rubber duck—along with the game of chess—joined 51 other classic toys inducted in the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong. How did such a simple toy become the object of such high honors? It is an interesting tail, I mean tale.
Rubber toys first appeared in the late 1800s, […]

Continue Reading about Rubber Duck: You Make Bath Time Lots of Fun Published on:
November 12, 2013

Hello, autumn. As pumpkins, parsnips, and apples signal the harvest, I’m gathering artifacts from The Strong’s collections related to a time when farmers were called away to war and civilians rescued the food supply.
World War I sent many of Europe’s male food growers to the front, leaving farms shorthanded at best. The war efforts commandeered rail lines essential for food distribution and disrupted trade between conflicting countries. Food shortages forced severe rationing, leaving Europe in dire straits. One month before […]

Continue Reading about War Gardens: Winning the Food Fight on Home Soil Published on:
October 28, 2013

Night after summer night, my friends and I would gather under the one streetlamp in our small hamlet to shoot marbles, devising our own simple games with the materials at hand. We didn’t know that the game of marbles, in one form or another, has endured for centuries. Even the Romans played marbles. In 1560, painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder depicted children playing marbles in his masterpiece “Children’s Games.” More recently, marbles have served as playing pieces in the misnamed […]

Continue Reading about Playing for “Keepsies”: Marble Play Published on:
October 4, 2013

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love music. On more than one occasion I’ve enthusiastically announced to friends, “I love songs!” because my musical enthusiasm encompasses a broad range of forms—scores, jingles, top 40 hits, or even the impromptu songs I compose while driving (a regular occurrence). A recent encounter with Milton Bradley’s Name That Tune board game made me consider the many ways in which music contributes to play and our daily lives.

Continue Reading about Playing Along: Music in Our Daily Lives Published on:
September 25, 2013

I’ve reached the age where pangs of nostalgia hit me when anyone mentions pop culture references from the 1980s. (DuckTales. Rainbow Brite. Trips to the mall with a pit stop at Orange Julius.) I’m not alone in this; compilation stories reminiscing about my generation’s “good old days” proliferate on the internet.
I recently conducted an informal poll with some of my friends, and one childhood toy we all remembered fondly was Teddy Ruxpin. This talking bear first appeared in 1985 and […]

Continue Reading about Toys That Talk: Blathering Bears of the 1980s Published on:
August 6, 2013

Summer weather has again brought an influx of motorcycles onto roads and highways. Seeing men and women enjoying a ride on everything from a small scooter to a big Harley V-Twin inspired me to think about when I graduated from my old Columbia to something with more oomph. Growing up in the 1960s, when motorcycle films enjoyed a peak in popularity, it seemed a very natural thing for some of us to move on to motorcycles after we outgrew our […]

Continue Reading about Transitional Objects of Play: A Man and his Motorcycle Published on:
July 30, 2013

What catches a collector’s attention and prompts the impulse to accumulate? Depending on the individual, it might be a melody, a clever cartoon, a poem, an unfolding drama, or a special object that stirs the imagination. The response is personal, even though it may be shared by a multitude. It may be sparked by a childhood memory, a wish that may or may not have been granted, something entirely new, or a sudden comprehension. For a child, it might be […]

Continue Reading about Selective Attention and Collecting Published on:
July 16, 2013