If you visit The Strong’s America at Play exhibit, among the fascinating and familiar artifacts on display, you will see a 1950s-era cartop boat filled with fishing equipment. An interpretive label next to the wooden watercraft asks guests a provocative question: “Is fishing play?” Ancient fishers almost certainly started out using spears, nets, and hand lines primarily to catch food. However, as early as 2000 BC an Egyptian wall painting illustrates a person gripping a short rod (or pole) with […]
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Strikeout to Home Run: Ken Johnson’s Dice-Baseball
The words “Phase 10” evoke smiles and fond memories in innumerable families worldwide. The bestselling card game’s creator Ken Johnson released the game as a young Black man in Detroit, Michigan, trying to break into the gaming industry. However, Phase 10 was not his first attempt to triumph in the game aisle. Johnson developed, produced, and sold a game just before the success of the game for which he is world-renowned. That earlier game is Dice-Baseball, and this is its […]
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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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Betty White Made Game Show History
By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
We are deeply grateful to the estate of Betty White and Allen Ludden for their donations to the National Archives of Game Show History. “Hollywood’s Happiest Couple” left behind a personal treasure trove of relics from their long and memorable association with TV game shows. Among them—a history-making Emmy Award given to Betty White for her work on Just Men!—now loaned from the estate for display at The […]
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 Importance of Coloring and Authentic Self-Expression
In 1900, Binney & Smith ventured into the school supply business. The company created handy multicolored non-toxic wax sticks in black, brown, orange, violet, blue, green, red, and yellow. Alice Binney combined the French words for “chalk” and “oily” (craie and olea) to make “Crayola.” The crayons hit the market in 1903 and kids snapped them up. Over the years, appealing new colors tracked fashion trends and cultural change.
One of Crayola’s most problematic colors was called Flesh Tint. First introduced […]
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The Sid Sackson Portal: One Year Later
In October 2021, The Strong launched The Sid Sackson Portal, a project funded by the National Archives’ National Historical Publications and Record Commission, which holds pride of place here in the archives.. On the site, you can view full PDFs of each year’s diary or Browse the Collection to keyword search or to view individual page image files. You can also learn more about Sid and his career, view hundreds of photos of game prototypes (as well as published games), […]
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The Price Is Definitely Right
One of the highlights for me in the summer of 2022 involved traveling to Los Angeles on behalf of the National Archives of Game Show History, The Strong’s initiative to preserve the story of that significant piece of American popular culture. Through the incredible connections of Bob Boden, one of the co-founders of the archives, while I was in L.A. I had the opportunity to attend the filming of an episode of The Price Is Right. While I didn’t get […]
Masters of the Universe Muscles into the National Toy Hall of Fame
On November 10, 2022, Masters of the Universe took their place of honor in the National Toy Hall of Fame. This is not the first time He-Man, Skeletor, and Castle Grayskull made recent headlines. Mattel Creations just launched a Masters of the Universe Origins He-Man 40th Anniversary Pack and fans who attended the San Diego Comic Con posted the grandiose Eternia play set to social media. Just this past July, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, developed by Kevin Smith, began […]
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