By james art ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — When curators at the National Toy Hall of Fame learned last fall that the Fisher-Price Corn Popper had been selected as part of the Class of 2023, they knew they had some serious work ahead of them.
With an official induction ceremony approaching, they’ll have to figure out how to display a toddler’s favorite push toy with colorful balls that ricochet around a transparent dome.
It’s not as simple as going to Walmart and pulling one off the shelves: The room, part of The Strong National Museum of Play in upstate New York, aims to show how his toys have endured and evolved over the years—pieces they go from wood to plastic, electronics are added.
That means digging through archives, auctions, the internet and garage sales to find an original or a near-original, a process repeated with each new Hall of Fame inductee.
“We want some recognizable things that are currently on the market, but we also want people to say, ‘Oh, I had one of those!'” said Christopher Bensch, chief curator at the Strong Museum, which is an interactive museum that’s more Larger than life toy box for children and adults.
For example, when the puzzle was introduced in 2002, they added one of the world’s first versions, a map of Europe glued to a thin mahogany board from 1766, along with a children’s Donald Duck board puzzle from 1990. Not all toys introduced there are also specific products in the hall — the one introduced in 2021 was just “sand”.
In the case of the Corn Popper, the curators had to find something that would be recognized across generations. The toy has been around since 1957 and more than 36 million have been sold, according to Fisher-Price. Nearly 650,000 visitors will arrive next year to see him and the other vaunted Hall of Famers.
Vaults, garage sales, eBay
After being voted on by experts and fans, many hall of fame toys are pulled for permanent display from the museum’s vast archives.
The honorees are usually so iconic—the Barbie doll, the teddy bear, the checkers—that chances are good there are several among the half-million or so items already in the ever-expanding collection.
But the staff is always on the lookout for toys worth saving — they keep an eye on eBay and garage and estate sales, especially if a toy is already in the Hall of Fame or seems destined for it.
With new toys on the market all the time, curators can only guess what the next Etch A Sketch, a mechanical drawing toy that’s still popular and largely unchanged after 100 years, might be, and which toys will disappear.
“We want to be the repository for them, for the nation or the world,” Bensch said. “That’s why we have 1,500 yo-yos in our collection, or 8,000 puzzles,” he said, naming two former recruits.
Some of the stocked board games, stuffed animals, dollhouses, and other molded, cast, and carved childhood mementos were donated by the makers. Others come from private collectors after death, divorce or relocation. A parent recently donated a collection of 1,600 American Girl dolls and accessories after their child outgrew them.
Some objects are pursued at auction, the way a fine art museum might acquire a masterpiece. That’s how The Strong got one of its most prized possessions, an original Monopoly set hand-painted on oilcloth in 1933 by inventor Charles Darrow before the game went into mass production. With Monopoly in the Hall of Fame since 1998, the winning bid of $146,500 at Sotheby’s in 2010 was over budget, but well worth it.
“We are the National Museum of the Game. If we were the Henry Ford Museum and we didn’t have the first Model T, we’d be tormented forever,” Bensch said.
An eBay find
Babies have been twirling behind Fisher-Price corn poppers for more than 60 years, but finding a “historic” one in intact condition on museum display has proved a challenge.
“These are toys that are pretty hard to get used to,” Bensch said, “especially the early versions with that plastic dome and the wooden balls hitting it. They did not survive in good condition.”
What was eventually put forth were two versions. One is a 1980 model bought on eBay by a woman in Canada who probably had no idea her shipwreck – its wear and tear visible on the weathered and slightly cloudy dome – is now a museum piece. The other is a shiny new version, still on store shelves for about $12, with a sleeker blue handle and beefier red wheels that reflect slight design changes over the years.
“It was hard to find a photogenic one that dated back more than a few decades,” Bensch said. “I’m not sure we ended up with one that was as old as we wanted, just because they were so loved.”
What makes a toy a hall of famer?
Each year, a new class of toys enters the hall of fame, the culmination of an annual process that invites everyone to nominate their favorite toy online.
Museum staff select the nominees from up to 12 finalists before a panel of experts votes on the winners. Eighty-four toys have won the honor since the hall opened in 1998.
Nominees can be as long-lasting as the steel assembly kit creations introduced in 1998 or as fleeting as the bubbles blown through a plastic stick honored in 2014.
Many new recruits are reminded that the real value of a toy is not necessarily in the price, but in the play. In 2008, a simple stick of wood – but a free sword or magic wand for a child – was introduced to the hall, but the ‘Flexible Flyer’ sleds and the Rubik’s cube failed to qualify that year. The Easy-Bake oven was bypassed in 2005 – by the cardboard box in which it may have been shipped.
The museum received 2,400 nominations for 382 different toys for the Class of 2024.
This year’s 12 finalists include apples to apples, balloons and trampoline. Also: Choose Your Own Adventure books, Hess Toy Trucks, remote control vehicles, the Wand Horse, Phase 10, Sequence and the Pokémon Trading Card Game and two permanent nominees, My Little Pony figures — a seven-time finalist — and action figures Transformers.
From these, a select few will be announced and honored in November, and the curators will start their hunt all over again.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.