I’m always surprised that more people don’t ask “What’s in a Conservator’s Toolkit?” because we usually have some rare and very cool favorite tools at our disposal for various tasks. Not your typical screwdriver, hammer, tape measurer stuff, I’m talking about tools you really wouldn’t find universally or at your local hardware store. What’s even more interesting is that each conservator’s favorites will be vastly different depending on the individual. So, I’m lifting the veil on my top five favorite […]
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Collecting “Peanuts” Playthings
In the fall of 1950, Charles Schultz’s first Peanuts comic strip ran in the daily newspapers. The comic centered on the disenchanted figure of Charlie Brown and a cast of characters with realistic faults and deep observations about daily life. Schultz introduced Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy, in the third comic strip. Snoopy first won my heart during a meet and greet at Knott’s Berry Farm in California. I was four years old. Now, a few decades later, I understand how […]
Let’s Play Museum: Museums in Video Games
A museum about play tends to attract employees who love to play, and that leads to office conversations about toys we’ve seen recently, how our new hobbies are going and, of course, what video games we’re playing. Recently, some colleagues and I were chatting about what we would be playing when we got home and I, realizing how I was about to sound, answered Two Point Museum. I could see in their eyes a lack of recognition and dug my […]
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Game Saves: Gatehouse Game’s “Spiralstone” for Game Boy Advance
While licensed titles dominated the Game Boy Advance, some developers looked to create more ambitious titles for Nintendo’s handheld. Gatehouse Games, comprised of former members of Core Design, the studio responsible for Tomb Raider, hoped that “Spiralstone” would be the next big hit. While early prototypes were made, the game would ultimately never hit store shelves. Tom Scutt and Martin Gibbins, two of the three primary developers of the title, shared with me what went wrong, and what the plans […]
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Contentedly Confounded at the World Puzzle Center
Last October, I attended my first convention for the Association for Games and Puzzles International, a community of scholars and collectors, at Italy’s World Puzzle Center. Hosts Roxanne and George Miller converted a castle in the small town of Panicale into a museum of more than 100,000 mechanical puzzles. I fell asleep each night in a room filled with puzzles. Cases of them lined the halls I walked through to get to each event. I even saw a bedroom full […]
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The Small World of Miniature Books
Recently while working on reorganizing some of the Brian Sutton-Smith’s Library and Archives collection, I began looking through our collection of miniature books. It was while going through these boxes and checking our library catalog to record them that I couldn’t help but ask some questions. Why were these made? Why would anyone wish to have a 40-volume set of Shakespeare’s works in a miniature format that is nearly unreadable? How did they make these books so tiny in the […]
Fantasy House: A Lesson Learned on the Importance of Accessing Historical Information for an Object
As soon as I saw the dollhouse known as Fantasy House (probably made in France in the mid-20th century), my curiosity was piqued, to say the least. In preparation for The Strong’s fall 2025 exhibit entitled Dollhouses Unveiled, I was able to spend time examining a number of dollhouses from our founder Margaret Strong’s original collection with curator Michelle Parnett-Dwyer. We both couldn’t help but linger on this piece, marveling over the extent of the details inside, which was a […]
Would You Like a Toy with That?
What’s the Big Deal About Fast Food Toys?
As an oldest child with a busy lifestyle, a calendar full of homework, dance classes, theatre rehearsals, voice lessons, Girl Scouts, choir, and sometimes Model UN or Math League, convenience and time efficiency were key in my childhood. My 25-minute commute to dance made me a frequent flyer at the McDonald’s that allowed me sufficient time to finish my food before we reached the studio. My meal of choice never wavered: a hamburger […]
Filling in the Blanks: A Media Archaeology of Computational Humor
BY: Robert King, 2024 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: What can drive cars, write essays, diagnose diseases, and is bad at jokes? Answer: Artificial Intelligence. (With apologies for the crummy riddle.)
Ever since AI’s astonishing advances in recent years, news of its accomplishments has been accompanied by a sour note: it can’t do humor. A 2023 study gives the statistics. When asked to generate over a thousand “original” jokes, ChatGPT returned the same 25 jokes in some […]
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