You mark time when you ride a bike. Your mind drifts. It’s the rhythm, probably, the lulling tempo. My mind drifts as I ride the paved path along the blue Niagara River. By late summer I’ve put another fifteen hundred miles on the tires. Biking has always been play to me and my autobiography is composed partly in a succession of bicycles.
My first bike was an ochre-colored machine with twenty-inch balloon tires and tan striping on the fenders. The color […]
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Out of the Wild Blue Yonder
For curators at the museum, some days feel just like Christmas.One day—out of the blue, appropriately—I received a phone call about a local collector with an extensive collection of toy airplanes and related playthings. Just the kind of thing that makes a curator’s day!
When I met Seymour Merrall, I had no doubt about his passion for toy airplanes. With a great job that took him around the world, Merrall used his travels to collect antique and contemporary toy aircraft from all […]
Jenga. Jenga? Jenga!
What’s in a name, anyway? From the Ouija board to Twister, from Rubik’s Cube to Pictureka, toy and game designers often seek unique and memorable names, or names that cleverly describe both the thing and the play. “Jenga” is one clever game name. While it doesn’t mean anything else besides the game in English, the word “jenga” is based on “to build” in Swahili. In the early 1990s the promoters stressed Jenga’s name in this advertisement. Kids and adults alike […]
The Stick Stands Out
Excitement was building at the start of November as we prepared to induct three new toys-the baby doll, the skateboard, and the stick-into the National Toy Hall of Fame. I’d studied up on the toys’ histories, gathered my anecdotes, and felt prepared to explain to anyone who asked the all compelling reasons why they should join the 38 classic toys already in the Hall.
But I didn’t quite expect the intense media and public response to one of those toys. You […]
The Odd Ogg Blog
What’s that scuttling across the floor? A horseshoe crab? A Roomba vacuum cleaner? No, it’s Odd Ogg, a nifty interactive toy from 1962. If you’re feeling formal, you might want to call him Mr. Ogg, since that’s how the folks at Ideal referred to him when the company introduced the rolling green plastic toy with his beady pink eyes and gaping mouth. While Odd Ogg wouldn’t win any beauty pageants, his interactive responses (powered by two D batteries) were pretty impressive for his time.
So how does […]