Inducted Toys

Slide

Inducted: 2026 People have coasted down hills for millennia, but modern slides of wood, steel, and plastic turned inclined planes into toys. By the 1900s, slides became fixtures at funhouses and amusement parks. The Helter-Skelter Slide at Coney Island, for example, opened in 1906. Participants rode an escalator to the top of the chute, slid down, and landed on a mattress. Slides proved popular amusements for people of all ages. The playground movement of the early 1900s further introduced slides into public […]

Care Bears

Inducted: 2026 American Greetings, Those Characters From Cleveland, and Kenner Care Bears collaborated to develop the Care Bears in the early 1980s. Presented as sweet, pastel-colored teddy bears with personality, Care Bears promoted caring, sharing, and how to express feelings. Begun as a line of greeting cards, the brand grew from 1983 to 1988 to include plastic minidolls and plush teddy bears made by Kenner, many other toys, animated TV specials, a television series, feature-length movies, electronic games, home decorations, and […]

Trivial Pursuit

Inducted 2025 Trivial Pursuit’s brain-racking questions have been challenging players for more than 40 years. As individuals or in teams, players race to collect pie wedges in six colors by maneuvering around the board and successfully answering trivia questions. The game rewards a vast breadth of knowledge, with questions ranging from geography to entertainment, from history to art, and from science to sports. After accumulating wedges of each color, players must land on the board’s central space and correctly answer a […]

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 […]

Pokémon Trading Card Game

Inducted: 2026 The Pokémon Trading Card Game, often abbreviated as Pokémon TCG, was initially released in Japan in 1996, following the popularity of the Pokémon monster collecting video games for the Nintendo Game Boy. Shortly thereafter, the compelling gameplay of the newly translated Game Boy role-playing games generated a surge of interest in the United States, prompting the subsequent localization of the TCG. The Pokémon TCG is renowned for its relative accessibility compared to other collectible card games such as Magic the […]

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 […]

Slime

Inducted 2025 Slime was created as an extension of an established chemical process. When sodium tetraborate (borax) combines with guar gum or polymers, it turns into a gelatinous substance that can be stretched, squeezed, broken apart, and molded back together like magic. In 1976, Mattel introduced Slime—a neon green jiggly substance sold in small plastic trashcans—but it did have some similar precursors. Ten years prior, Wham-O introduced Super Stuff, a pink, moldable material that could be stretched, popped, and squeezed just like […]

Baseball Cards

Inducted 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 in bright […]

Top

Inducted 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 used […]