Kids: they come and go, but, toys: they accumulate. You wouldn’t want to Risk (Parker Bros.) having to say Sorry (Milton Bradley). So, you keep everything!
If you think your attic has a lot of toys, you should see Margaret Strong’s museum
Ihave toys in the attic.
Bet you do, too.
Kids: they come and go, but, toys: they accumulate.
And accumulate, they certainly do.
Saturated with memories, toys are tough to part with.
We archive the expensive stuff: the American Girl dolls, Brio train sets, Steiff bears, and those pricey, plastic Breyer horses. Miniature china teasets, too delicate to ever play with, remain swaddled in their original packaging. Some instinct finds you storing a tower of board games lest some rainy evening someone drops a Clue ( Parker Bros.) to play Mission Impossible (Ideal). You wouldn’t want to Risk ( Parker Bros.) having to say Sorry ( Milton Bradley). So, you keep ’em. You keep everything! The old school Atari games; that hand-medown Fischer Price pull-along telephone that children born past 1990 think is a car on a rope. And until such a time as there is a sacred pyre for beloved teddy bears, the stuffies stay, too.
What are we to do to with them all?
Margaret Woodbury Strong knew what to do with them all. She started a museum. A museum of toys, and board games and dolls.
A museum dedicated to the value of play.
From an early age Margaret Woodbury Strong was a collector. She was an only child and she liked dolls. You know how they say that only children are indulged? Margaret’s collection grew to 27,000 dolls. She also collected toys. Toys and dolls and games. She started early and just kept going.
She could afford to. Her folks rode the crest of the wave of nascent technology. They were early investors in the Eastman Kodak Company, with the balance of the family coffers filled out by a buggywhip fortune and flour mills. In today’s world, that trifecta would equate to Snapchat, Uber and an organic chia farm.
The senior Woodburys were world travellers, and they took Margaret along. She was allowed a small bag for her toys and for any mementos she collected along the way.
A child collects for a completely different set of reasons than an adult collects. Margaret collected things that fascinated her; things that would intrigue any child. Anything she thought was interesting, went into the bag. All sort of things beyond toys ended up going into her small bag.
As she grew, so did her fascination with toys and games, and everyday household objects. She married and had a daughter. Sadly, the daughter died in her early 20s and Margaret’s husband died 12 years after that. From that point on, Margaret’s entire focus became her toy collection.
Dollhouses and electric trains take up a lot of space. Despite adding wings for galleries, Margaret’s burgeoning collections soon out grew her 30- room house in Rochester, N.Y. She was constantly solicited by other collectors who wanted to view her collections and considered adding new wings and lecture halls, the better to be able to display her treasures. It became evident, however, that an even big- ger showcase was needed. The idea of a museum was hatched under the name of the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum of Fascination. In 1969, at age 72 she died in her sleep, but not before laying the groundwork for a museum that would open in 1982.
In the middle of downtown Rochester today, you’ll find a gleeful structure. One end has a tumble of colourful, giant blocks; a massive snaking tin can sort of structure slides through the middle, and something that looks a bit like Calgary’s Saddle Dome flutters in the mix. The building seems a happy collaboration between Frank Gehry, Woody and Buzz Lightyear. This is The Strong, The National Museum of Play. It covers 26,200 square metres and houses the National Toy Hall of Fame, the American Journal of Play, the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, along with the toy treasures that a young Margaret lugged home from around the world.
Given that this is first and foremost a museum for kids, it stands to reason that the museum is hyper-interactive. Kids can “shop” an entirely kid- scaled grocery store; there are train rides and carousels and video game arcades. And yes: I can tell you how to get to Sesame Street; it’s at the Strong. As is the entire Jim Henson archive. Monopoly, Scrabble, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all of the action heroes, My Little Pony: any toy you ever encountered in your entire life, and many you haven’t, you’ll find them at the Strong. There’s also a kindergarten and preschool, in addition to a wide range of educational programs.
We might have the world’s leading shoe museum, but Canada doesn’t have anything approaching the scale of The Strong’s collections based on play. The University of Waterloo had a 5,000-piece game and toy collection that, in 2010, was transferred to the Museum of Civilization. This year, a self- declared National Toy Museum, with an emphasis on classic toys, opened in Victoria. But for the most part, if Canadians want to revisit the magic of childhood and the rejuvenation that play offers, they’re going to have to head up to the attic.