Each year, I like to take a look at the toys nominated for entry into the National Toy Hall of Fame, which is housed in the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. (I've been there, a brief but fun visit. What's not to like about a museum dedicated to toys and playing?)
There are a lot of wonderful toys and games that have been inducted in the Toy HoF. The Hula Hoop. The Baby Doll. Jacks. Teddy Bears. PlayDoh. Doll Houses. Balls.
All personal faves.
But my favorite favorites are the most basic of items, toys like Alphabet Blocks, Crayons, Chalk, Swings, and Playing Cards - things that aren't over complicated, tricked out, expensive, yet provide for hours of fun. (Or at least they did when I was a kiddo.) I was a little bummed out that one of last year's finalists - Balloons - didn't make the cut.
But there are even more basics, the most basicests of basics, that don't cost a thing. How wonderful that the Hall of Fame includes things that aren't produced by Disney or Mattel, that aren't made in miserable overseas factories, that don't end up in waste dumps. Sticks. Cardboard Boxes. Blankets. Sand.
Sticks can, of course, be weapons, which is likely their most common usage. But they can also be canes or shepherds' crooks. Teachers' pointers. Outlines/framing for a pretend house. Bats. Etc.
Cardboard Boxes. The fun never ends! One of the treats of my childhood was when someone in the neighborhood got a large appliance delivered - a fridge, a washing machine - and us kids got the box. Instant club house or fort, good until it rained. And - my favorite use case - a tumbler: stuff a bunch of kids in it and push it down the steep bank of the frontyards of the street I spent my first seven years on. With luck, you'd get a couple of somersaults in before the kid-filled box hit the edge of the cement retaining wall and landed on the sidewalk with a satisfying clunk. Small boxes were just fine, too. You could make trains, houses, villages full of houses, doll beds. Or just push a baby around in it. You could use a piece of cardboard as a makeshift sled for snow, or to slide down grass banks if you didn't have a big, intact box.
Blankets were hiding places, tents, things to toss other kids in. They were costumes. Cover your head: ghost or monster. Over your shoulders: cape. Draped around your body: glamorous ball gown.
Sand also made an excellent toy. Castles. Forts. Food (especially when augmented with acorns, pignuts, and red berries). Mud pies. Just digging in at the beach and watching the hole miraculously fill with water. Digging for worms. (Oogie.) Digging to China. (A complete waste of time. You knew you were never going to get there.)
Ah, the basicests! Available, versatile, affordable. No rules. No tricky pieces. No assembly needed. And good for all sorts of imaginative play.
Unfortunately, only available in places where it snows - and there's a diminishing number of those, I'm afraid, but Snow is such a terrific plaything.
You can use it to build forts, igloos, caves. You can make snowballs. You can slide on it. (And lest you think that you need a pricey Flexible Flyer, a toboggan, a flying saucer, to enjoy sledding, you can slide using a piece of cardboard. (C.f., Cardboard Box.)
Snow is good for making snow angels.
And snowmen.
I was especially fortunate to spend my early years in a flat in my grandmother's coal-heated three decker. So we had real bonafide pieces of coal to use for eyes, for the smile, for the buttons. Even in the dead of winter, you could always find sticks for arms. And even my frugal mother would spot us a carrot to use for a nose, and some worn to the nubbin knit cap, a rag to use for a scarf. When we moved to the next block and no longer used coal, you could always find stones. (This was New England. Rocky, stoney ground in abundance.)
Snow was also, of course, the ultimate pro-play, pro-toy thing in that we were pretty much guaranteed a couple of Snow Days per winter. (Snow days required at least a foot of snow, but there were plenty of foot-of-snow storms in the Worcester of my childhood. Bummer if they happened on a weekend. Hiss, boo!) I know I've said this many times in the past, but one of the most beautiful sounds in the world was the WNEB radio announcer saying "No school all schools, Worcester public" - and here we would hold our breaths waiting for the words we longed to hear - "and parochial."
Tough luck for my mother. Good luck for us! A day off! And all that glorious snow to play in!
As I write this post, I don't yet know what's been elected to the Toy Hall of Fame for 2025.
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