I grew up in a world without LEGO minifigures. I received my first set of LEGO bricks as a Christmas gift in 1973—a wide, white box full of flat, green “grass” pieces, primary-colored bricks, and potential. I constructed houses with doors and windows that opened and closed. I built cars, both the ones illustrated on the box and monstrous contraptions not unlike modern Humvees. And when I needed people, I made them. So did every other kid I knew. Two […]
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Playing a Maddening Game: Golf Under Pressure
In high school I often worked as a caddy, hitchhiking to a golf course in the morning. (Oh, weren’t those the carefree days.) Flat rate for eighteen holes paid $1.75 for carrying a kangaroo bag with a fifth of scotch stashed in the pouch; if you carried double the rate jumped to $3.50. I used to play golf, too, on the free days when courses accommodated their toilers. And the two facts are not un-connected; it was caddying that cured […]
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Of Rats and Men: Mammals at Play
Have you ever thought about what rats have in common with comedy club audiences? No? I hadn’t either until I met neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp and some of his students.
Professor Panksepp studies the origin of emotions by examining the nervous systems of rats at play, and that got me thinking about the legendary comedian Henny Youngman. Nobody could deliver a one-liner like Youngman, the great comedian and screechy violinist. He’d roll the build-up and the punch line into one small, effective package. […]
New Year’s Resolutions from the Artifacts
Some folks have reported visions of sugarplums recently—I’ve worked so closely with museum artifacts that I’m hearing their voices. Call me the Toy Whisperer or just plain loopy, but I listen when the museum’s toys and games talk about their New Year’s resolutions. The artifacts have some ambitious goals for 2012, but this doesn’t surprise me at all—they were busy last year, too.
Mobo Bronco has committed to proving he’s a big-boy horse by sleeping without his night light as often […]
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Playing in Time
Recently, a museum guest asked me to tell her about the most interesting question I’d received as director of the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play. The answer was easy—I take great satisfaction in uncovering some elusive fragment of information that helps a researcher resolve an issue or solve a puzzle. As more information becomes available on the Internet and researchers become increasingly adept at finding their own answers, the questions that reach me have become more challenging and […]
Do You Think Video Games Are Worth Saving?
We do! Recently, news reports cited as wasteful spending a $113,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games to preserve video games. We disagree. We believe video games not only are the most dynamic, exciting, and innovative form of media today but also an important form of play and a driver of cultural change.
Games sharpen people’s ability to solve problems and overcome challenges. Games teach people […]
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Entering the Dragon’s Lair (into ICHEG’s Collections)
The more than 140 arcade cabinets ICHEG owns are key components of our tens of thousands of video games and related artifacts. Our arcade cabinets range from early pioneers like Computer Space and Pong to rare titles like a stand-up Discs of Tron and the only copy of Sega’s giant Tetris in North America. Still, one game remained on my wish list until only recently: Dragon’s Lair. Now we own an original, working version!
I remember when Cinematronics debuted Dragon’s Lair […]
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Hot Wheels: A 2011 National Toy Hall of Fame Inductee
I was eight years old in 1968 and, like many of my friends, I played with toy cars. That year, Mattel introduced toy autos called Hot Wheels. Unlike the toy cars before them, Hot Wheels rolled really fast either downhill or with a touch of a finger. Accessories such as track sets and collector cases included speedy images of the cars in motion. Naturally, kids found these appealing and the tiny 1/64 scale replicas fascinated adults as well.
What made the […]
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Edible to Elaborate: Holiday Gifts Then and Now
The holiday season is once again upon us. With seasonal songs filling the airwaves and retailers decorated with all that sparkles, I am amazed at how the holidays have managed to find their way back again so soon—this time more expensive than ever.
For more than 125 years, advertising has played a key role in the holiday season and in building consumer demand. As far back as the 1920s and 1930s, toy companies recognized the importance of marketing the “must-have” toy […]
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