Inducted Toys

Transformers

Inducted 2024 In the early 1980s, Hasbro secured the rights to Japanese toymaker Takara’s Diaclone and Micro Change line of shape-changing robot toys. Hasbro developed the toys for a U.S. audience and in 1984 premiered Transformers with an elaborate backstory about a war between robots developed by Marvel Comics. The characters split into two fractions: the heroic Autobots—peaceful transport vehicles led by Optimus Prime—facing against the villainous Megatron and his Decepticons. Each of the figures issued in 1984 had its own […]

My Little Pony

Inducted 2024 Hasbro based My Little Pony on their earlier My Pretty Pony. At about 11 inches high, My Pretty Pony was made of hard plastic and came in one color—brown with a white blaze. What made it a little bit endearing was the trigger beneath its chin that twitched its ears, winked its eyes, and swished its tail. In 1983, Hasbro trotted out My Little Pony, six little pastel horse figures, each made of a soft vinyl with a silky mane […]

Baseball Cards

Inducted Year: 2023 Baseball players began posing for photos in the mid-19th century. Photography, like baseball, was becoming more widespread and popular. The late 1880s saw tobacco manufacturers including the cards in packages, to stiffen them and as incentives toward purchase. Soon candy manufacturers offered these premiums too, and went a step further, manufacturing their own cards. The production of cards burgeoned in the 1930s, when famous players like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were featured, and cards were printed […]

Top

Inducted Year: 2022 Ancient peoples of Greece and Rome amused themselves with toys resembling the spinning tops we know today. Archaeologists have found 5,000-year-old clay tops in Iraq and 3,000-year-old whip tops in China. Native peoples of the Americas played with tops in the 15th and 16th centuries. Top makers have formed their tops from clay, metal, stone, wood, and, later, rubber, tin, and plastics. Shapes and types of tops also vary, leading to the different ways in which the tops are […]

Phase 10

Inducted 2024 Black inventor and Detroit native Ken Johnson designed his first game, Dice-Baseball, when he was just 12. At 19, he decided to go into business for himself after being laid off from his welding job at the Ford Motor Company. Johnson partnered with retailer Kmart to sell an updated version of Dice-Baseball, but the game ultimately fell short of sales expectations. Undeterred, Johnson began work on what would become a far greater success: the card game Phase 10. Phase […]

Nerf Toys

Inducted Year: 2023 In the late 1960s, game designer Reyn Guyer and his co-workers at Winsor Concepts developed a game idea inspired by the popular Stone Age characters from The Flintstones television series. Guyer’s game required players to toss foam “rocks” at their opponents while protecting their own piles of ammo. Guyer offered the game to Parker Brothers, but the toy giant tossed out the game and kept the foam, preferring the notion of a ball that kids could play with […]

Lite-Brite

Inducted Year: 2022 In 1966, a New York City window display featuring hundreds of colored lights inspired toy creators Marvin Glass, Henry Stan, and Burt Meyer. Convinced they could design and build a plaything employing this concept, they simplified and streamlined the idea, and reduced the light source to a 25-watt light bulb. Their design placed a perforated plastic panel in front of the bulb and covered the panel with a simple sheet of black construction paper. When colored translucent plastic […]

Sand

Inducted Year: 2021 Sand may be the most universal toy in the world. From a geologist’s perspective, sand is a dry, gritty material consisting of small, loose pieces of rock, soil, minerals, and gemstones. But children recognize sand as a creative vehicle for play suitable for pouring, scooping, sieving, raking, and measuring. Wet sand is even better, ready to construct, shape, and sculpt. Historians have every reason to believe that the earliest people played in sand. As early as the 1800s, newspapers […]

Risk

Inducted Year: 2021 The French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse designed a board game with simple rules but complex interactions, La Conquête du Monde (The Conquest of the World) in 1957. Purchasing the rights, Parker Brothers published it with a few small changes as Risk in 1959. It became the first popular game involving strategy, diplomacy, conflict, and conquest.  Risk players control armies of tokens on a world map board in attempts to capture adjoining territories from other players, battling by rolls of the […]