National Toy Hall of Fame

By Marli Simmons, Collections and Conservation Intern, 2026
Interning for The Strong’s Collections and Conservation team has allowed me to see and interact with thousands of the museum’s collections items. Many objects are exactly as you’d expect, lighthearted games, toys, and dolls. But some artifacts are a little more bizarre, eccentric, and even scary. I came to discover that many of these more unconventional objects were a part of the museum’s founding collection. Securing a charter for a “museum of fascination” […]

Continue Reading about Three Eerie Objects from the Museum’s Founding Collection  Published on:
October 23, 2026

By Jena Black, G2 Site Coordinator
At The Strong National Museum of Play, we believe play is the language that connects generations. Through play, children learn, friendships grow, and communities become stronger.
The Strong’s Generation Two (“G2”) is an intergenerational volunteer program that pairs adult volunteers with kindergarten and first-grade students throughout the school year. Through weekly, one-on-one play sessions, these partnerships grow into genuine friendships that enrich the lives of both the students and their volunteer “play buddies.” Each week, along […]

Continue Reading about G2: Where Play Connects Generations Published on:
October 23, 2026

About 10 years ago, I came across an article about John William Patrick Ryan, “Jack,” an eccentric, Yale-educated electrical engineer. He hosted dinner parties in a tree house with a crystal chandelier; drove a 1935 Reo fire engine around Bel Air, California; designed Cold War missiles; and married five times, including once to Zsa Zsa Gabor. Like many of the women Ryan charmed in his lifetime, I was intrigued by this brilliant, playful, and complicated person. Ryan began work with […]

Continue Reading about Happy 100th Birthday to Jack Ryan Published on:
October 2, 2026

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
60 years ago, this month—October 17, 1966, to be precise—game show fans first laid eyes upon the largest tic-tac-toe grid ever constructed, an 18’ by 18’ arrangement of boxes and lights from which some of the funniest gags in game show history would emit. The Hollywood Squares with Peter Marshall debuted on NBC.
Creators Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley had been dabbling with variations on an idea in recent years; […]

Continue Reading about Hollywood Squares Turns 60 Published on:
September 30, 2026

The year is 2013. I’m in my college dorm, putting little board game pieces into bags. The year is 2026. I’m in my office, putting little board game pieces into bags. The more things change, the more things stay the same. But these bags are archival polyethylene, I’m wearing nitrile gloves, and I might be overthinking it.
As one of The Strong’s curators, I decide which board games and puzzles are added to the museum’s collections. Once they’re added, I’m responsible […]

Continue Reading about Bagging Board Games for Fun and Nonprofit Published on:
September 25, 2026

It’s interesting how as time passes, something that felt like a cultural fixture becomes a blink in time. For me, the iPod exemplifies that phenomenon. I was in middle school and high school around 2008 to 2012, during its prime, when I upgraded from a simple mp3 player to the iPod and its world of iTunes and digital music downloads. In 2008, I was rocking the 3rd generation iPod nano, and suddenly my music player could also hold and display […]

Continue Reading about iPlay Published on:
September 18, 2026

By: Dr. Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez, 2025 Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow
For generations of children, brushing Barbie’s hair has been as central to play as dressing her in the latest fashions. Beyond the familiar brush tucked into countless doll boxes, Mattel has repeatedly returned to hair as a site of innovation—designing dolls and accessories that transform styling into a creative, tactile, and sometimes experimental practice. Barbie’s evolving hairstyles chart a history of play that is as much about identity and imagination as it […]

Continue Reading about Let’s Talk About Barbie Hairplay! Published on:
September 11, 2026

Jubensha, translated from its original Chinese as “script(ed) murder,” shares similarities with Western murder mystery dinner party games, yet equating the two oversimplifies a far more complex cultural phenomenon. Since the 2010s, in China, where the scripted murder game trend originated and subsequently exploded, Jubensha has captured the hearts of many Gen Z players, making Jubensha parlors into the coveted third spaces away from home and work that many Millennials and Gen Xers once found in malls or cafes. A […]

Continue Reading about The Rise of Scripted Murder Games from China Published on:
September 4, 2026

When South African bishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his anti-apartheid activism, Linda West Olds of Delaware turned to her 10-year-old son Kevin and asked: “Do you know what segregation is?”
He did not.
Perplexed, Olds probed further. Did he know who Ralph Bunche was? What about Andrew Young? Kevin drew blanks. He barely knew much about Martin Luther King Jr. As Olds later recalled, her son responded, “Well, he must be a great man, or we […]

Continue Reading about The Phenomenon of Rise ‘N Fly: A Black History Board Game Published on:
August 28, 2026