Spring has brought the annual influx of chocolate bunnies into my supermarket. And April’s sunnier days with longer daylight have sent my neighborhood’s rabbits onto a quest for sprouting greenery to munch. With hares seemingly everywhere, I’ve also started noticing all the rabbits in The Strong’s collection.
For instance, I spotted this dapper rabbit, attired in a suit and carrying both a satchel and a furled red umbrella. His black eyeglass frames remind me of Bunny Rabbit, one of the stars […]
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Altering Classic Video Games
I recently watched independent animation film director and designer Léo Verrier’s short film, Dripped. The 8-minute film presented a fictional story of a burglar who stole famous paintings from museums and proceeded to eat the artwork. Shortly after the thief consumed an artwork, his body morphed into a figure or design from the specific painting. I like to imagine that Verrier came up with this idea for his film after viewing a Picasso. Many artists find inspiration in existing art. […]
The Mighty Miniature
As children, many of us assume that the larger the package, the better the present, right? I believed this until my eighth birthday, when the largest gift box contained… a cat litter pan. (A relative thought it an appropriate gift, as my parents had recently allowed me to adopt a kitten.) It was then and there I realized a bigger box doesn’t always indicate a better gift.
Margaret Woodbury Strong, The Strong’s founder, would probably have agreed that smaller items are […]
From Battlezone to World of Tanks
In 1970, the movie Patton became a top-grossing film of the year, earned eight Academy Awards, and starred George C. Scott as the brilliant, eccentric World War II tank commander General George S. Patton. At a time when the country was mired in jungle warfare in Vietnam, in which tanks played relatively little role, audiences warmed to the epic story of America’s fast-moving tactical victories in the “good war” a quarter-century earlier. Tanks fired the imagination of not only movie-goers, but […]
My Favorite Toy Catalogs in the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play
The Brian Sutton-Smith Library & Archives of Play is a treasure trove of materials devoted to the intellectual, social, and cultural history of play. The library’s collection of more than 140,000 resources—books, periodicals, comic books, audio-visual materials—include more than 18,000 trade catalogs, the majority of which are focused on the toy, game, and recreation industries. Prior to the Internet, printed trade catalogs served as the primary method for manufacturers to promote their product lines to retailers. Stores such as Woolworth’s, […]
Warrior and the Video Arcade Fighting Game
On a recent stroll through the arcade in The Strong’s eGameRevolution exhibit, I recalled a favorite childhood memory of my hometown arcade. During the early to middle 1990s, even as arcades declined, young gamers like me hurried to our local arcades after school to pick fights. No, these weren’t real fights, but some players left with sore fingers from mashing buttons and injured egos from too many lost battles. During these years, video arcade fighting games such as Capcom’s Street […]
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It’s Snow Fun Again!
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, it used to snow a lot more that it does today; or at least it seems that way. Without getting into a debate about climate change, let me say that during my childhood there always seemed to be plenty of snow to play in all winter long. Though horse-drawn sleighs were certainly fewer and farther between in the 1950s, sledding remained a popular winter pastime as can be seen from the […]
Video Games in a Museum?
Most everyone is some sort of a gamer, whether that means you play Call of Duty to strategically advance and complete missions or you simply log onto your iPhone for a quick game of Words with Friends. Electronic games are everywhere. The Strong has the advantage of interpreting electronic game history in the context of play history.
When a guest at The Strong views electronic games and related artifacts displayed in various exhibits, she might see how preserving the history of […]
Room for Recollection: The Miniature World of Alice Steele
I was born and raised in a small rural town in Western New York. I lived near my mother’s childhood home where I enjoyed many happy hours in the company of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Our families would often gather to play cards, bake, do laundry, or celebrate special occasions. I loved to sit quietly and listen to the grown-ups tell stories of times both present and past. The stories I recall don’t feature faraway places or extraordinary […]
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