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BlogHoliday time is a good occasion to think about humor and play since it’s filled with reflection, rest, and relaxation with relatives and friends—a time to play again. Like vacation time, holidays let us back off a bit, lighten up, and try to laugh a lot more, for our own good. I firmly believe that the day we stop playing is the day we stop living.
Continue Reading about Born to Laugh: The Element of Humor in Play
Every autumn, The Strong inducts two or three toys into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The process begins by staff examining the thousands of nominations received from the public through the Hall of Fame website and in letters, emails, and phone calls. Museum curators, educators, historians, and administrators then carefully consider the many toys nominated to determine how well each one fits the established criteria for induction. We evaluate each toy for its longevity, icon status, innovation, and the […]
As Acquisitions Cataloger, I get to see every object ICHEG acquires. The CHEGheads have already written about some of our most influential new items of 2013, such as our collection of nearly 7,000 Japanese video games; a Fix-It Felix, Jr. arcade machine commissioned directly from Disney to promote their animated feature film Wreck-It Ralph; and Hercules Pinball, the largest commercial pinball machine ever created. Here are some of my other favorite acquisitions of this year. 5. Jet Force Gemini Signed […]
When Joel Billings launched Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) in 1979, he was fresh out of college and committed to the proposition that players would find wargaming fun and easier on a computer. The company’s first product, Computer Bismarck (1980), became the first computer wargame to gain commercial success.
Continue Reading about The Strategic Simulations, Inc. Collection
When Charles Lindbergh made his famous New York to Paris flight from May 20 to 21, 1927, he became an overnight celebrity. Parisians mobbed Le Bourget airport immediately after his landing and even tore bits of souvenir fabric from the wings of The Spirit of St. Louis, his trusted airplane. But Lindbergh’s arrival back in the United States cemented his reputation as a true American hero, with a ticker-tape parade and his image as the first Time magazine “Man of […]
Continue Reading about Lindbergh Lands in Paris! Toy Industry Gears Up!
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!
Few of us think of the Fairchild Channel F (1976) when playing our new disc-based video game consoles. Fewer of us think of its creator, one of the first African American video game designers, Gerald “Jerry” Lawson (1940-2011). Nevertheless, the seeds for today’s systems were planted during the middle 1970s by Lawson and the team of engineers who created the first cartridge-based video game system. Although the more powerful and better marketed Atari 2600 (1977) quickly eclipsed Lawson’s creation, the […]
Continue Reading about Collection Documents the Career of Video Game Pioneer Jerry Lawson
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 […]
Today, electronic games are being integrated into our lives in ways that often have nothing to do with a video screen. In previous blogs CHEGheads noted that fantasy football might be considered an electronic game and Der Gute Fabrik’s brilliant Johan Sebastian Joust is undoubtedly an electronic game, even if it doesn’t have a video screen. With players’ and game designers’ increased interest in gamification and augmented reality games (ARGs) video gaming will increasingly expand beyond play on screens.
Consider exercise. […]
