Inducted Year: 1998
In 1902, on an unsuccessful hunting trip, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that expedition trackers had caught and tied to a tree. The incident struck a chord with the American sense of fair play. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman immortalized the incident in “Drawing the Line in Mississippi.” Tugging at American heartstrings, Berryman drew the old, injured female bear as a helpless cub. With Roosevelt’s permission, Morris Mictom, a Russian immigrant and Brooklyn candy-shop owner, sewed […]
Erector Set
Inducted Year: 1998
While watching the construction of steel girders to support power lines in 1911, A. C. Gilbert conceived the Erector Set, an educational toy that encouraged kids to create their own miniature buildings. Unlike its British cousin, the Meccano toy, Gilbert’s simple design fashioned sturdy one-inch square girders with just two bolts. Businessmen and industrial psychologists hailed the toy that put play to work and encouraged children’s “constructive instincts.” A national advertising campaign, the first ever for a toy, […]
Crayola Crayons
Inducted Year: 1998
In 1900, Binney & Smith, makers of familiar red barn paint, ventured into the school supply business. Noting teachers’ complaints of poor quality chalk, the firm imagined a new market. Adapting a black grease pencil used to mark containers, Binney & Smith created handy multicolored non-toxic wax sticks in black, brown, orange, violet, blue, green, red, and yellow. Alice Binney combined the French words for “chalk” and “oily” (craie and olea) to make “Crayola,” and Crayola Crayons entered […]
Frisbee
Inducted Year: 1998
The Frisbee story starts in college. Late 19th-century students at Yale and other New England universities played catch with pie plates (some say it was cookie tin lids) made by the nearby Frisbie Baking Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. They yelled “Frisbie!” to warn passersby away from the spinning discs. In 1948, Walter Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni created a plastic version to sell at county fairs. The airfoil at the outer edge, called the Morrison slope, gives […]
Barbie
Inducted Year: 1998
Watching her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, Ruth Handler (cofounder of Mattel, Inc.) decided that girls would have more fun with three-dimensional dolls. Baby dolls filled store shelves in the 1950s, but Handler created a grown-up doll with a stunning wardrobe. Thus, welcome Barbie, the teenage fashion model. Within a year of her introduction in 1959, Barbie became the biggest selling fashion doll of all time. Sales surged with each annual addition of Barbie dolls decked out […]
Etch A Sketch
Inducted Year: 1998
French electrical technician André Cassagnes applied his experience with the clinging properties of an electrostatic charge to invent a mechanical drawing toy with no spare parts. He called his creation L’Ecran Magique, the magic screen. Introduced at the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1959, the gadget failed to draw much attention. Numerous manufacturers passed over a chance to pick up the new toy, concluding that Cassagnes wanted too much money for it. However, the Ohio Art […]
Monopoly
Inducted Year: 1998
Monopoly, the most popular board game in history, began life as The Landlord’s Game in 1904. Elizabeth Magie devised the game to point out the social pitfalls of unequal wealth among people. But instead, players greedily collected huge piles of money and property, delighting in opponents’ financial troubles. Circulated informally at first, the game only gained popularity when Pennsylvanian Charles Darrow produced the first commercial version in 1934. By that time, several changes had worked their way into […]
Tinkertoy
Inducted Year: 1998
Stonemason Charles Pajeau and partner Robert Petit dreamed up the “Thousand Wonder Toy” in the early 1910s after watching children create endless abstract shapes with sticks, pencils, and old spools of thread. Adding holes on all sides of a round wooden wheel sized for sticks included in the set, they named their creation Tinkertoy. Shop owners successfully promoted the toy with elaborate store displays. Tinkertoy joined a host of other construction toys in the early 20th century, including […]
Play-Doh
Inducted Year: 1998
Play-Doh modeling compound started out as wallpaper cleaner. Joe McVicker learned from a teacher that kids usually found modeling clay too hard to manipulate. Discovering that the squishy cleaning product he manufactured could substitute, McVicker shipped some to the school. After teachers and kids raved, he offered to supply the product to all Cincinnati schools. More rave reviews followed. McVicker showcased the modeling clay at a national education convention in 1955, and word spread to Macy’s and Marshall […]
Marbles
Inducted Year: 1998
Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all played with marbles made of stone or polished nuts. Shakespeare mentioned marbles in his play Twelfth Night. The earliest settlers brought them to America from Europe, and even a few founding fathers shot a skilled game! A kids’ game, marbles has also become an officially recognized sport with its own world championship competition governed by the Official Set of State and Interstate Rules. Stone or clay formed the earliest marbles, but the […]
LEGO
Inducted Year: 1998
Named “Toy of the Century” in 2000 by both Fortune magazine and the British Association of Toy Retailers, LEGO blocks have delighted generations of kids and their parents. In 1949, Ole Christiansen, a Danish carpenter, created a set of interlocking red-and-white “Automatic Binding Blocks”—LEGO bricks. In Danish, leg godt means “play well.” Educational theorists and developmental psychologists, especially those who follow Jean Piaget, find LEGO bricks an ideal toy, one that proves how children are not simply passive […]