Posted by Rick Sherin on 05/15/2012
“Plunk yer magic Twanger, Froggy!” Back in the early 1950s, these magic words enabled that impudent rubber frog known professionally as Froggy the Gremlin to suddenly appear out of nowhere on The Buster Brown Show. Materializing in a puff of smoke and uttering his famous “Hiya kids; Hiya, Hiya!” greeting, Froggy’s subsequent antics and smart aleck remarks visibly annoyed the show’s host, a jolly fellow known to all as Smilin’ Ed McConnell, but always delighted the kids gathered in the adjacent peanut gallery.
Kids and television go back a long way. Although World War II had interrupted television’s development, the new medium took off in earnest soon afterward. Commercial TV rapidly emerged as more 7½ by 10-inch screens found their way into homes and advertisers realized that kids made an ideal audience.
Posted by Victoria Gray on 05/08/2012
Do you ever find yourself wishing that you could be a child again, just for a few hours? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy adulthood, but I freely admit that every once in a while I find myself wanting to be a kid again, having a snack in my parents’ living room while watching Duck…
Posted by Lauren Sodano on 05/01/2012
Consider a paradox: people who play the fastest devote great lengths of time to doing so. This presents a conundrum only slightly less challenging than a Rubik’s Cube—unless you’re the current world record holder, who solved the puzzling polyhedron in less than six seconds. If you asked champion Feliks Zemdegs, he’d probably say the goal…
Posted by Jennifer Giambrone on 04/25/2012
…except when it comes to toys. We spend a lot of time talking about the way the media portrays women—how images of svelte, scantily-clad models on New York City’s sky-high billboards affect us mere mortals below, for instance. The struggle with body image and beauty standards begins at a very young age for girls, often…
Posted by Patricia Hogan on 04/17/2012
“Hey, Mom. Where do toys come from?” Perhaps kids don’t ruminate about the origin of toys as they might about a newborn sibling, but toys do come from somewhere. Toy inventors dream new ones up all the time, to the delight of kids everywhere. The National Museum of Play’s collections include toy prototypes and design…
Posted by Michelle Parnett on 04/10/2012
Simon and Schuster published the first Little Golden Books in 1942. Filled with colorful illustrations and appealing tales, these inexpensive picture books hooked kids across America. Thanks to my cousin’s hand-me-downs, my childhood library contained a copy of the series’ Little Red Riding Hood. I confess, I forgot about this book until I began to…
Posted by Carol Sandler on 04/03/2012
Stroll into nearly any home, school, grocery store, or gas station and, if you look around, you’ll begin to notice books everywhere. I say “if you look” because books have become so commonplace that they barely register in the mind’s eye. Through fiction or fact, verse or prose, art or photography, books exist to spark…
Posted by Victoria Gray on 03/27/2012
Long before I began working in museums, I studied photography as an undergraduate student. My interest began as a teenager, sparked by a love of black and white documentary photographs. I was captivated by the universal language the medium spoke and the idea that with the push of a button, a single moment could be…
Posted by Chris Bensch on 03/23/2012
I’m always interested when one of the classic toys in the National Toy Hall of Fame earns its share of media attention, and this time Etch A Sketch had its moment in the spotlight. When one of Mitt Romney’s aides recently compared the fall presidential campaign to the timeless drawing toy, my ears perked up….
Posted by Nicolas Ricketts on 03/20/2012
Do you marvel at the toys and dolls on display at The Strong? Ever wonder how they came to the National Museum of Play? As curator of games—board games, card games, and many more—I’m responsible for acquiring historic playthings and popular new examples. But how exactly do we do it? One way is through donation….
“Plunk yer magic Twanger, Froggy!” Back in the early 1950s, these magic words enabled that impudent rubber frog known professionally as Froggy the Gremlin to suddenly appear out of nowhere on The Buster Brown Show. Materializing in a puff of smoke and uttering his famous “Hiya kids; Hiya, Hiya!” greeting, Froggy’s subsequent antics and smart aleck remarks visibly annoyed the show’s host, a jolly fellow known to all as Smilin’ Ed McConnell, but always delighted the kids gathered in the adjacent peanut gallery.
