Post #400: The Toy Hall of Fame 2025

On the way to work last thursday or friday, the guys on my usual morning radio show were talking about the winners of this year's Toy Hall of Fame.  It was their job to be entertaining and silly, and a bit outraged by each other's choices.  Here they are.
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They raised the same questions that always come up when so many activities have to be grouped together.  Do board games count as toys?  A "toy" should be something you (especially the younger version of you) can play with -- do whatever you want to do, make something up, entertain yourself.  We don't really play "with" a board game.  We just play the game.  But that means following rules and trying to reach win conditions.  It's a different feel altogether.

The winners this year show how hard it is to classify our hugely creative range of activities.  Then were: Battleship (which started as a pencil and paper game), slime, and Trivial Pursuit.

One of the radio guys argued that Trivial Pursuit is too grown-up to count.  Another interesting split.  Is a quiz on a few hundred cards really a toy?  Is it even a game?  I never cared for it -- the board itself serves no real purpose.  You can just read cards at each other and hard over the little tokens as needed.

Comically, "snow" was nominated for the award this year.  To which, everyone I mentioned this to (and the whole morning show) said, "How is that a toy?"  Hmm.  Well, you can make snowmen, snow angels, have a snowball fight, suck on it, stuff it down the back of someone's shirt while they're waiting for the school bus ... okay, personal experience it interfering with my list.  But boy can you play with snow.  It feels a little odd these days because you don't have to buy snow from a toy company.  Of course, you can do most of these same activities with mud.

I think they already have "stick" in the Hall as one of the oldest known toys in history.  What could be simpler, or more primitively human than pickin up a stick and hitting your sister or brother with it?

Anyway, the National Toy Hall of Fame is at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.  Here is their website and here our pick for a video of someone visiting the place.  In this case, it's News 8 Rochester.