NBS Fastbreak

It’s 2025. Are you reading this on your smartphone or computer? It’s apparent that modern society is attached to its digital devices. When it comes to memories and our social media accounts, we all experience the same cycle. We take a photo with our phone. The photo gets added to the Photos app, buried among thousands of previously snapped images. It’s new today, but within a week, this image will be buried by tens—possibly hundreds—of newer ones. We upload it […]

Continue Reading about Committed to Memory: The Glynn Scrapbook, Part 1 Published on:
September 12, 2025

By Dovi Kutoff, Guest Blogger
As CEO of OrangeOnions, I’ve built my career as part of a team designing toys that bring comfort, creativity, and connection across generations. But long before patents, plush characters, and partnerships, it all began with one beloved object: My blankie.
For nearly 50 years, my blankie traveled with me—from childhood bedrooms to red-eye flights, through family milestones and global meetings. It wasn’t just my comfort—it was my cape, my tent, my magic carpet. And recently, I made […]

Continue Reading about Why I Donated My Blankie to The Strong Museum of Play: From a Childhood Cape to a Legacy of Imagination Published on:
September 5, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
It’s back-to-school time, so this is a reminder to the parents and guardians out there to make sure your students are all stocked up on class supplies—pencils, notebooks, folders, buzzers, and bells. Wait, buzzers and bells?
That’s right. Game shows have gone back to school. In 2024, National Archives of Game Show History co-founder Bob Boden and longtime Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! executive producer Harry Friedman established a curriculum […]

Continue Reading about Next Game Show Creators Published on:
August 28, 2025

Opening the 1989 Sears Christmas catalog and perusing the fifteen-odd pages of video game advertisements, filled with pictures of boys and accented with blue, reveals what many women have felt for decades: games just aren’t made for us. Until the 1990s, video games were almost exclusively marketed to boys and men. Women, of course, can and did still play video games; but playing them meant wading through a swamp of sexist portrayals, if we were even lucky enough to encounter […]

Continue Reading about From Girl Talk to Girl Games: The Analog History of Games for Girls Published on:
August 23, 2025

In May 2025, I had the pleasure of spending two weeks at The Strong Museum as a Valentine-Cosman Research Fellow to conduct research on the collectible card game (CCG) genre. While the field of Games Studies has grown significantly in the last decade, locating texts, artifacts, and archival materials focused on games and play in most institutional libraries and archives is difficult. Given my own research focus is understudied, even within the field, the problem was compounded for me.  
For those […]

Continue Reading about Researching Collectible Card Game History at The Strong Published on:
August 13, 2025

Across time, it feels like “Don’t play with your food!” has been a persistent parental refrain. However, the need to keep reciting that dictum demonstrates that kids (and at least a few adults) perpetually find ways to turn mealtime into playtime. Some research has even suggested that playing with food can help babies and toddlers develop healthy eating habits. No wonder that, over the years, manufacturers have found ways to take that playful inclination and turn it into products that […]

Continue Reading about Don’t Play with Your Food! Published on:
August 13, 2025

The Commodore VIC-20 first debuted at the Computer Electronics Show held in June of 1980. It began to be sold for North American households the following year and from the get-go was a hit–an inexpensive computer that could display color graphics. The other major competitors of the time were the Atari 400, TRS-80, and Apple II. It’s easy to forget now, but in the early ’80s, Apple was still the newcomer, whereas Commodore—under the leadership of the aggressive and visionary […]

Continue Reading about A Brief History of the Commodore VIC-20 Published on:
August 2, 2025

By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
If you were watching Jeopardy! on June 23, you saw a game that ended with a strange coincidence. The Final Jeopardy! clue:
In 1896, the Vassar-educated wife of this man wrote, ‘Thousands of dollars may be paid for a copy of Shakespeare’
Contestant Emily Croke was the only one who wrote the correct question: “Who is Folger?”
After being declared the winner, Croke revealed to host Ken Jennings, “That was my […]

Continue Reading about Jeopardy Coincidences Published on:
July 28, 2025

Back in 2010, The Strong opened eGameRevolution, the museum’s first permanent exhibit to focus on the history of video games. For more than a decade, that exhibit informed and delighted millions of museum guests. We recognized early on that the exhibit’s arcade was a hit with guests who loved playing and learning more about coin-operated video games. So, when the museum opened its ESL Digital Worlds: High Score and Level Up exhibits as part of its 90,000-sq. ft. expansion in […]

Continue Reading about Infinity Arcade Exhibit Explores the History and Impact of Coin-Operated Games Published on:
July 28, 2025