Buffalonian
Scott G. Eberle (besides being one of our favorite people) has just recently
released a book Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame. It’s all about the toys Americans have
grown up with and still love today. This Sunday, December 6th, from 2 – 3PM, Scott will be at
the Amherst Street Wegmans in Buffalo, signing his lavishly-illustrated coffee
table compendium, just in time for a holiday gift ($29.95).
In
addition to authoring this book, Scott is Vice President of Interpretation at the Strong National Museum of Play, billed as the only museum in the world devoted
solely to the study of play. He has spent the last few decades developing
exhibits and writing for the museum’s Play Stuff blog. He is also Acquisitions
Editor for the American Journal of Play, the museum’s interdisciplinary
quarterly journal.
If
you have someone on your gift list who thinks they’re too old for toys, this
history of all the best is the next best thing. No wonder, when given a choice,
Scott is the guy we like to sit next to at parties.
The following is an interview with the author:
What
is the National Toy Hall of Fame?
SE:
The
National Toy Hall of Fame at Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New
York recognizes toys that have achieved longevity and national significance in
the world of play and imagination. These toys help us trace the social and
emotional history of play in the United States. And how we play reveals a great
deal about how we develop, how we learn to make our way socially, and how we
use our spare time both as children and as adults. It’s easy to overlook these
most basic things about our own histories. The toys help us rediscover all
that. Criteria for induction into the hall include: Icon-status (the toy is widely recognized, respected, and
remembered); Longevity (the toy is more than a passing fad and has enjoyed
popularity over multiple generations); Discovery (the toy fosters
learning, creativity, or discovery through play); and Innovation (the toy profoundly
changed play or toy design).
Why
do you think the toys in your book have endured all these generations?
SE:
Mainly
because, year after year, they found ways to keep inviting players to play.
Take the Jump Rope, for example. It’s cheap, portable, simple, and when it comes
to the games you can invent, it’s literally open-ended. Or the Slinky®–it is just so much
fun to watch, it’s mesmerizing. (And you never forget the sound, slink-slink.) It’s likely that Crayola®
Crayons
helped you imagine the world, spatially. The same goes for Alphabet Blocks as you stacked them
up; and they might just have begun to familiarize you with your letters. The
trusty old Bicycle helped us explore both our geographical and our physical
limits. It’s hard to wear these toys out. Think of Checkers. Did you know that the
possible checkers games number in the quintillions?
Do
you own toys, and are they in the National Toy Hall of Fame?
SE:
Yes I
do, and I don’t even have to pretend that they’re guilty pleasures. I keep a
yo-yo on my desk for emergencies. You’d be surprised how a twisted or balky
sentence will straighten out and cooperate after a few tosses of a Yo-Yo. Frank
Conroy, the author of the great novel Stop Time thought about playing
this way and said “to yo-yo you have to let go.” Same goes for writing
sometimes. Also, I ride a bicycle every day that the weather cooperates, and
sometimes when it doesn’t. I don’t bike for transportation, I bike for fun.
What’s
your favorite National Toy Hall of Fame toy?
SE:
Oh,
that would be telling. But I can say what my second favorite toy is – The Cardboard
Box.
You turn it into a castle or a space ship or a theater or a playhouse or a
semi-truck. All you need are some crayons and a scissors. First you think
outside the box, then you play in it. When it snows you can turn the box into a
sled. Who cares if it’s in tatters when you’re through sliding? You rescued it
from the recycler in the first place.
Tell
us a few of the little known and more interesting stories behind these toy
classics in your book.
SE:
They’re
all fascinating. Let me pick a
few. Did you know that Barbie® began as a doll called Bild Lilli, a figurine of a working
girl (star of a slightly naughty cartoon strip) that sold as a gag gift in
German tobacco shops? Ruth Handler, one of the founders of Mattel, spotted the
doll while on vacation, and argued her colleagues into producing a version for
American girls. They dissed the idea but she soon triumphed. Silly Putty®
began life as a failed substitute for
the rubber that was so scarce during World War II. Play-Doh® began as wallpaper
cleaner more than a half-century ago. Monopoly®, the toy that most
celebrates our economic system, was introduced even earlier, during the Great
Depression as it happens, when, economically, we were at our shakiest. These
are just a few of the many stories I tell about the iconic toys in the National
Toy Hall of Fame.
Why
is a historian like you writing about toys?
SE:
Toys,
especially these popular toys, tell us some about business history and
technological history, and more about our national preoccupations, our hopes,
ambitions, and dreams. Children generally don’t leave documents behind for us
to read, but toys help us recover what was on their minds. Toy trucks may have
stayed pretty much the same over the long haul, and the fantasy and storyline
is pretty much the same now as it was then. But Barbie has undergone many
transformations in her first fifty years, from teacher and stewardess, to
paleontologist, and presidential candidate. History is always about the way
things stay the same and the way they change. I’ve written about these toys in
little meditations that also pry into the psychology they reveal, what they
tell us about how we learned and what we valued. Our toy memories are intensely
personal, but the interesting part is that we share them with millions of other
players. Any writer would be grateful to work with that combination.