Highlights Archives
Toy Stories at the Wisconsin Historical Museum
Did you have a Spirograph? How about Shrinky Dinks? Mr. Potato Head? Relive your childhood at the Wisconsin Historical Museum's new exhibit Toy Stories, a historical look at popular toys and games from the 1940s to the present. The exhibit opens October 17. Toys occupy a central place in our own lives and in American culture. Both the kinds of toys available and the ways that we interact with them have been shaped by social, economic and cultural developments of the last 70 years. Even the idea of "play" itself has been promoted as an important element of a happy, healthy American childhood. Rising incomes, the growth of materialism, the increasing importance of entertainment, and a more relaxed, permissive attitude toward parenting have all contributed to our desire for toys. And toys reflect our culture's shifting fads, fashions and values about education, gender roles, violence and safety throughout the 20th century and into today.
But toys are more than mere commercial products. They connect us to our own past, providing meaningful memories of childhood interests, traditions and personal relationships that continue long into adulthood.
Toy Stories allows you to explore the stories of individual toys and how they came to be. Did you know that Monopoly, now seen as a celebration of capitalism, was originally conceived to illustrate the immorality of corporate monopolies? Or that Play-Doh began life as a wallpaper-cleaning compound? Learn more about all your favorite toys and share your own stories too.
The exhibit includes timeless classics such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Twister, but also toys with intriguing Wisconsin connections like the Sno-Coaster, American Girl dolls, and Duncan yo-yos — more 200 toys are on display! Watch vintage TV toy commercials in the gallery and learn which toys mattered most to such famous Wisconsinites as Governor Doyle, race car driver Matt Kenseth, journalist Tom Snyder, singer Al Jarreau, writer Jacquelyn Mitchard, and actor Eric Szmanda.
Toy Stories opens October 17 and runs through May 26, 2007.
Toy Stories is supported by the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission with additional funds from the Overture Foundation. The exhibition is also made possible through the generosity of Lee and Janet Geronime, the Empty Stocking Club, the FRIENDS of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and a gift in memory of Dorothy Mosher. In-kind contributions were provided by Duncan Toys and Bo and Tamera Bernal.
:: Posted October 11, 2006
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