What sort of party games stick in your memory? No, not the ones from your teen years which involved getting your first kiss. I’m thinking of the classic party games for children’s birthday parties. And one of the top party games for that demographic—at least in my childhood—would have to be Pin the Tail on the Donkey. The earliest donkey pinning games in The Strong museum’s collection come from the 1890s, which aligns with accounts from the internet (because you […]
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Saving Speedrunning and Digital Communities
How do you preserve the history of a community? What even makes up a community? How can you store something so abstract, intimate, and interpersonal in files and text? These are the questions I was asking last summer at The Strong. My goal as an intern at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) was to curate and archive the history of video game speedrunning—the act of beating video games as rapidly as possible by any means […]
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Continuing the Adventure from Home: Tabletop Role-Play Games while Social Distancing
For most gamers, rolling for initiative has been put on hold for the moment. Presently, due to social distancing guidelines, fans of role-playing games find themselves unable to go to each other’s living rooms to weave a story through teamwork and creativity.
Thankfully even with the obstacle of quarantines and lockdowns, there are options for those role-playing stories to continue and opportunities to create new adventures! We are fortunate that this era is also the digital age, and programs such as […]
Name That Tune
Like many folks born into musical families, I grew up around people always playing and making music. My family takes seriously the learning benefits of strumming guitars and drumming on pots and pans. But developing an ear for rhythm also helped us create our own fun almost anywhere. Playing with music might be my family’s favorite thing to do; we dive into song parodies, genre trivia, impromptu karaoke battles, operatic renditions of Billboard hits, and more. Our music […]
Getting Away: Is It a Vacation or Trip?
Vacation. It’s a pleasant-sounding word and an even nicer thought. Most folks sigh at the very mention of it or even get a wistful, far-off look, whether they’re thinking about an upcoming planned getaway or just wishfully dreaming of one (as many of us are these days).
There are scientific studies dedicated to proving the legitimate health benefits of regular vacations, research that most of us would favorably support. On the other hand, I’ve also encountered people who have […]
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Memories of Atlantic City: It’s Not Just Monopoly
Mary Valentine, The Strong Museum Trustee
Most of us know the connection that Monopoly has to Atlantic City, but for me there’s more to the story than just the board game. Now that June has officially kicked off the summer—and in some ways, it may not be the kind of summer we expected—this might be a good time to share some memories.
We didn’t have Disneyland or Hershey Park or Six Flags when I was growing up in the late ‘50s […]
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Fabrics and Findings
Today, with the plethora of home improvement shows and lifestyle blogs, many of us want to create stylish rooms, but we do not always have the necessary resources to revamp our living spaces. While many of us are still practicing the art of social distancing, it might be fun to pull old catalogs from the bin, collect some scraps of fabric or textured paper, and grab an old notebook to make into scrapbook doll house.
At the end of the 19th […]
Ten Reasons Why Play is Essential (for Children AND Adults)
Play is good to do and good for you! That’s why play is universal in humans and widespread throughout the animal world. Here are 10 reasons to play:
1) Play Makes You Smarter
2) Play Strengthens You
3) Play Helps You Make Friends
4) Play Boosts Creativity
5) Play Reduces Stress
6) Play Enhances Attractiveness
7) Play Builds Resilience
8) Play Helps You Solve Problems
9) Play Promotes Discovery
10) Play is Fun
Now if you want to delve deeper to learn the research that supports any of these statements, these […]
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Digitizing and Preserving Toy Trade Catalogs: The Sacred Duty of the Librarians of Play
There are five laws of library science, penned by S. R. Ranganathan in 1931:
Books are for use
Every person his or her book
Every book its reader
Save the time of the reader
Library is a growing organism
The fourth law is easily glossed over, but without it the other laws could not be obeyed. “Save the time of the reader” means, at its core, “make things easy to find.” Librarians have spent hundreds of years refining classification systems, standardizing subject headings, and embracing new […]