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Historians debate the origins of paper airplanes. Early attempts at constructing flying machines fascinated children and adults alike. The success of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 fostered renewed hope of powered flight and no doubt contributed to the purported invention, in 1909, of the paper airplane. More than 100 years later, on November 9, 2017, The Strong announced that the paper airplane, along with the game Clue and the Wiffle Ball, had joined the elite of the […]

Continue Reading about The Paper Airplane Soars into the National Toy Hall of Fame Published on:
December 8, 2017

“Victoria? I have to tell you something… And you’re definitely going to roll your eyes.”
I stare at my stepson and brace myself for whatever words are about to follow. We are sitting around the table at my in-laws home eating spaghetti and he’s looking a bit worn out from the NHL hockey game he attended earlier that day in Montreal. I set my fork down in anticipation.
“Hit it,” I prompt.
“Well….” he draws out the word so it becomes multisyllabic. “Dad […]

Continue Reading about Quite a Character Published on:
November 30, 2017

On November 9, 2017, Wiffle Ball took its place of honor in the National Toy Hall of Fame, joining 64 other classic toys and games. Introduced in 1953, the Wiffle Ball represents the optimism of the postwar era and the romanticism of life in the suburbs. Part of the Wiffle Ball’s charm is that it remains relatively unchanged since its introduction. The orange, black, and white Wiffle Ball box today features nearly the same typeface and instructions on how to […]

Continue Reading about Wiffle Ball Joins the National Toy Hall of Fame Line-up Published on:
November 17, 2017

​Today people find themselves bombarded with ideas, images, and characters from every kind of media. Game manufacturers quickly capitalize on that phenomenon by producing classic games licensed for popular themes. For Yankees fans, New York Yankees Monopoly makes a great gift. Instead of properties, gamers buy and trade team players while circling the game board as a catcher’s mask or a World Series trophy. Tired of the classic Game of Life? Try Game of Life: My Little Pony. What […]

Continue Reading about Scooby Doo as Colonel Mustard in the Graveyard: Licensed Clue Games Published on:
November 10, 2017

Although I sometimes roll my eyes at the new commemorative “holidays” that get added to the calendar, I’m actually delighted to see that November 4, 2017 has been declared the first annual National Easy-Bake Oven Day. I can’t promise that I’ll be sending greeting cards to my friends and family to honor the occasion, but it’s good to know that one of the classic toys in the National Toy Hall of Fame is drawing renewed attention—naturally by way of Twitter, […]

Continue Reading about Happy Easy-Bake Oven Day! Published on:
October 27, 2017

What makes a game classic? Part of the answer is longevity. Most people consider chess classic; we’ve played it for centuries. What about playing cards? Woodblock-printed cards appeared during China’s Tang dynasty (618–907), while written rules for card games were first seen in15th-century Europe. Another characteristic of classic games is continued popularity. Games such as Monopoly in the 1930s and Scrabble during the 1950s broke sales records at first. But they continued to sell in the years that followed and […]

Continue Reading about What Makes a Game Classic? My Buddy Plays Mahjong Published on:
October 12, 2017

I was a visiting Research Fellow at The Strong museum in July 2017. While at the museum, I researched the history of the toy industry, focusing on the ways in which the main trade journal, Playthings, represented the struggles of different companies to capitalize on the different opportunities the market offered to them. In doing so, I traced the links between intellectual property law and the making of the U.S. toy industry in the early 20th century.
The importance of Playthings magazine for legal […]

Continue Reading about Playthings and Intellectual Property Published on:
September 27, 2017

As Chief Curator for The Strong, I start each morning with a to-do list and an idea of what I’m hoping to accomplish, but I can’t always picture what will turn up in the course of a day. Sometimes an unsolicited package turns up as part of the day’s mail delivery. In this instance, the elaborate decoration on the cardboard box gave me some hints as to what might be lurking inside.
Sure enough, when I opened the box, I discovered […]

Continue Reading about What Goes Around, Comes Around Published on:
September 15, 2017

Reading reports about some retail store closings, it’s hard to ignore that many of us often prefer shopping online with millions of products at our fingertips to navigating a shopping cart through the aisles of our local retailers. As a historian with an interest in consumer culture and as someone who spent countless hours of my childhood playing the latest Nintendo Entertainment System games on a demonstration kiosk at our local K-Mart, it’s difficult to image a world without the […]

Continue Reading about Preserving the First Video Game Merchandising Display Unit Published on:
September 7, 2017