Appropriate for International Day of Play, the goal of each game is to travel across countries and oceans. In The Game of Travel, players draw tickets with a list of locations. On a player’s turn, they proceed to the next location on their ticket. Once they’ve visited each location on the card, they draw a new ticket that takes them on the next leg of the journey. Players win by visiting Constantinople (now Istanbul) and returning to the United States. Named after historian and children’s book author Hendrik Van Loon, the Wide World Game was released almost 40 years after The Game of Travel. Fittingly, given its title, the game features a wider world than its predecessor. While The Game of Travel restricts players to Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, the later game’s routes take players across every continent except Antarctica. Here, the goal is to be the first to travel from San Francisco to Manila. The Wide World Game follows the same basic flow of moving between cities according to one’s tickets.

Both games were influenced by the increasing availability of international travel around the turn of the 20th century. Alongside technological developments and Gilded Age economic changes, the number of issued U.S. passports increased significantly in the late 19th century. Steamships and trains made travel more accessible to a growing middle class. Such methods of travel are highlighted in the games through an unusual feature. The Game of Travel has players swap out their moving marker according to the method of travel: a train when traveling by land, a ship if by sea. Since the games are so similar, though, it’s interesting to see where they differ. The wide world changed between 1894 and 1933. By the 1930s, there were several commercial airlines in the U.S., and with new forms of travel come changes to the rules. The Game of Travel requires players to move one city at a time, but the airplane in the newer game lets players move through as many as six cities in a single turn!

Guests could appreciate many things about the games if we showcased them in a display. The Game of Travel is a beautiful production. Its cover features painterly illustrations of attractive destinations like the canals of Venice and England’s Windsor Castle. Its metal steamships shimmer in the light. The Wide World Game’s stylized world map appears hand-drawn with vibrant colors. I’m sure guests would be delighted to see them. With interpretive labels, we could provide some information about the games’ rules and historical context. But games are meant to be played.

To be clear, not even I get to play the games in our collection. This is for good reason, although I’m often dying to give the games a try. For one, many of them are fragile. The Game of Travel was printed more than 100 years ago, and it shows. The board is coming off in flakes, leaving holes in eastern Europe. We wear gloves when handling artifacts not just to protect the objects, but also to protect ourselves. The malleability of the steamship tokens hints that they are likely made of toxic metals, and paint used in the Wide World Game is probably also dangerous. So, how can we have guests engage with these historic games without putting them or the games at risk?

We chose to create our own versions of each game. Making the copies required collaboration between multiple teams at the museum. First, I scanned the games’ boards and cards and sent the scans off to Corinna, one of our public programs coordinators, to fabricate those components. They pasted the boards to a large piece of cardboard and printed out and laminated the cards. Meanwhile, Martin, our arcade game conservation technician, began 3D printing trains, planes, and ships using a resin printer. Martin’s trains are a real highlight, featuring little linked cars that follow behind the locomotive. After laminating the cards and sealing the boards, our more robust versions of the games were ready to be played with by childhood hands.

Our International Day of Play programming was a success. I delivered a small presentation showcasing the original games, along with some other travel-themed games and puzzles, while our associate curator Natalie gave a fascinating talk about postcards and souvenirs. The reproduced games were available to play all day. The preservation of board games is important. Researchers come from across the globe to study our collection. But there are probably very few living people who’ve actually played these games. I’m excited that we gave our visitors a chance to join that exclusive group.

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Margaret Woodbury Strong, the museum’s founder, was an avid collector of dollhouses. A ticket from 1958 invited guests to the “First Public Showing of Mrs. Homer Strong’s World-Famous Collection of Doll Houses” at her residence in Pittsford, New York. The nearly 100 dollhouses exhibited represented only a portion of her collection. In celebration of Margaret Woodbury Strong’s fascination with spectacular miniatures, The Strong National Museum of Play has opened Dollhouses Unveiled. The exhibit provides a unique opportunity to view dozens of rare dollhouses and miniatures from The Strong’s collections (many not seen on public view in decades along with others new to the museum).

The dollhouses on display provide a sample of design and play patterns from the 1830s to present day. A few highlights include the Mystery House and Blue Roof Victorian Mansion, as they have been called. Around 1890, the famed FAO Schwarz toy store carried a line of dollhouses with delicately carved wood accents. Dollhouse expert Flora Gill Jacobs later named the series “Mystery Doll Houses,” because she couldn’t identify the maker, though some speculated that prisoners made them. The elaborate houses signaled luxury and were correspondingly expensive. One version sold for $80—nearly a half-month’s salary for a lawyer at the time. During the same decade, the Mortiz Gottschalk Company created an elaborate mansion with a blue roof. FAO Schwartz also featured this house as a Christmas exclusive. Its construction of lithographed paper on wood created a spectacular design with a wondrous concoction of gables, turrets, spindles, and balustrades.

Nearly 100 years later, Barbie moved into her Magical Mansion. Felix Burrichter, co-editor of Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey, said the pale walls and fluffy sofa reminded him of the suburban house in the 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction. Snobs might have scoffed, but kids loved ringing the functioning doorbell and phone. While thinking about life in plastic, one of the most striking objects on display is the Kaleidoscope House manufactured by Bozart Toys in 2001. Designed by artist Laurie Simmons and architect Peter Wheelwright, the Kaleidoscope House has sliding transparent walls, an arced-slab partial roof, and modern art pieces. The creators sought to update the conventional dollhouse with subtle touches, like sliding walls that allow for play with color, design, and light. The Kaleidoscope House provides just one example of how the history of dollhouses reveals shifting ideas about domestic life, innovative design, and imaginative play.

Aside from the dollhouses that include Margaret Strong’s childhood dollhouse and elaborate recent  residences marketed to grownups, guests to the exhibit can complete a scavenger hunt for teeny tiny miniatures that replicate everyday life, play with the lights and sounds we’ve added to the 1837 Amsterdam House, and view vintage dollhouse advertisements and photographs. Dollhouses Unveiled will be on display through January 4, 2026.

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As CEO of OrangeOnions, I’ve built my career as part of a team designing toys that bring comfort, creativity, and connection across generations. But long before patents, plush characters, and partnerships, it all began with one beloved object: My blankie.

For nearly 50 years, my blankie traveled with me—from childhood bedrooms to red-eye flights, through family milestones and global meetings. It wasn’t just my comfort—it was my cape, my tent, my magic carpet. And recently, I made the bittersweet decision to donate it to The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY, where its story continues as part of a museum dedicated to the meaning of play.

The Red Wagon That Changed Everything

• A flying carpet
• A fort roof
• A ghost costume
• A cloak of invisibility
• And always, a source of comfort

It wasn’t just fabric. It was a blank canvas for imagination.

I was six years old. We were riding home after a joyful Passover celebration, my dad pulling my brother and me in our bright red Radio Flyer wagon, our blankies bundled on our laps. At some point, mine slipped out. It was run over in the street. I was devastated—until the next morning, when I picked it up, slipped my head through the hole, and transformed it into a superhero cape. From that day on, my blankie became whatever I needed it to be:

A Podcast, an Email, and a New Journey

Years later, I listened to an episode of The Playground Podcast, hosted by Christopher Byrne and the late Richard Gottlieb, both legends of the toy industry, where Christopher Bensch, VP of Collections at The Strong, shared that the museum had never acquired a real childhood blankie—despite its emotional legacy. That stuck with me. Three years later, I reached out to him:

“Chris, I’ve been contemplating this for a while, and now—three years since your podcast appearance—I’ve decided. I’m offering to donate my favorite childhood blankie to The Strong. It’s been my companion through every bedtime story, every journey, every dream.”

His response was warm and affirming:

“Reading your email this afternoon brought laughter and delight—the power of your blankie and its history made vividly present. You may have even given me the subject for an upcoming blog.”

“Wait… You’re Giving That Away?”—My Kids React

When I told my kids, their reaction was a mix of disbelief, affection, and bewilderment.

“You’re giving that away? To a museum? Who would even want your old, ripped-up blankie?”

I laughed, but deep down I knew: it wasn’t about the appearance—it was about the story. The joy. The transformation. That blankie was my sidekick, my safe place, and my creative launchpad. The chance to embarrass them was just the icing on the cake.

A Visit to The Strong I’ll Never Forget

When I arrived to deliver my blankie, I was welcomed by Christopher Bensch, who gave me and my son an unforgettable private tour of the museum’s vault. Inside were treasures from across toy history—prototype action figures, classic arcade machines, vintage dolls, and iconic board games.

But what stood out most was Chris’s storytelling. He didn’t just show us objects—he shared their emotional and cultural meaning. His warmth, insight, and passion left a lasting impression. I’ve spent decades in this industry, and I can say without hesitation: he’s one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met.

Afterward, my son and I spent hours exploring the museum. We laughed, built, raced, played—and then made our way to Hasbro Game Park, where we completely lost track of time. From the bright, bold play structures to the larger-than-life Hasbro characters we’ve long admired, it was a celebration of childhood brought to life. We climbed, spun, slid, and marveled at how the lines between toy and imagination could disappear so joyfully. It was, without question, one of the highlights of our visit.

The Psychology of Play, and a Quote That Stuck with Me

In one exhibit hall, I paused to read a quote from a museum sign:

“There are many ways of playing, and every time we pursue one, we experience six basic psychological elements of play: anticipation, surprise, pleasure, understanding, strength, and poise.”

That blankie gave me every single one of those. And nearby, a quote from Fred Rogers stopped me in my tracks:

“When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.”

That small child was me. And thanks to that blankie, I believed I could be anything.

How It Inspired OrangeOnions

That belief is what led me to found OrangeOnions—a toy company built on the same spirit of creative transformation, emotional safety, and storytelling. Our first product lines were born from that same desire to combine comfort and character, just like my blankie once did.

• Blankie Besties are part plush, part blanket, and all heart—companions that provide emotional reassurance and spark imagination.
• Our patented Snugible are wearable plush friends that offer warmth, security, and a bit of whimsy—beloved by toddlers, seniors, and especially kidults, the growing audience of adults who embrace play for comfort and joy.

Through partnerships with legacy brands like Sesame Street, Hasbro, NASA, NASCAR, NCAA, and Monopoly, we create products that don’t just entertain—they connect. Across generations. Across cultures. Across memories.

The Most Rewarding Part

The most rewarding part of my job? It’s not the innovation or the retail milestones. It’s the moments when I see children truly enjoying the toys we’ve created—their faces lighting up, their hands gripping a character they instantly love. Many of those moments are captured in photos that grace the walls of our offices—reminders that our work has meaning. But nothing compares to seeing my own children and grandchildren find joy in the very products that were born from my blankie’s legacy. Watching them snuggle a Snugible, or imagine wild stories with a Blankie Bestie, brings it all full circle.

A Legacy of Play

Donating my blankie wasn’t saying goodbye—it was passing something forward. It was an invitation for others to dream, to play, and to believe in the quiet magic of ordinary things.

I grew up in a loving, warm home where imagination was encouraged, storytelling was second nature, and my blankie was as much a part of my family as any toy or tradition. That nurturing environment shaped who I became—and taught me that play isn’t just about fun. It’s about connection, creativity, and courage. To children building forts in the living room, to parents creating safe spaces for wonder, to grandparents reliving childhood through their grandchildren: never underestimate the power of play.

A torn blanket became my superhero cape. That cape inspired a company. That company became my life’s work. And through it all, I’ve learned that play has no expiration date. It transcends age, era, and background. It teaches us who we are—and who we can become.

This journey has been the joy of a lifetime. And my hope is that my blankie, now resting at The Strong, will continue to spark dreams, comfort hearts, and remind people of every generation: sometimes, the most powerful things in life begin with play. It all began with a blanket.

The post Why I Donated My Blankie to The Strong Museum of Play: From a Childhood Cape to a Legacy of Imagination appeared first on The Strong National Museum of Play.

It’s back-to-school time, so this is a reminder to the parents and guardians out there to make sure your students are all stocked up on class supplies—pencils, notebooks, folders, buzzers, and bells. Wait, buzzers and bells?

That’s right. Game shows have gone back to school. In 2024, National Archives of Game Show History co-founder Bob Boden and longtime Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! executive producer Harry Friedman established a curriculum of academic courses about game shows for California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA).

Friedman explains, “I was at a TV Academy Foundation conference about three years ago. I was randomly seated next to Dr. Dina Ibrahim, who was heading up Cal State University’s entertainment alliance. We talked and she seemed intrigued by the work I did. We began discussing game shows, and how ubiquitous they are, and the effect they’ve had on pop culture.”

Friedman, half-jokingly, told Dr. Ibrahim, “I think you should have a course about game shows, how to produce them, and how to develop them.”

To Friedman’s surprise, she liked the idea. Dr. Kristiina Hackel, the head of the Department of TV, Film and Media Studies at Cal State LA, asked Friedman to draft a proposal for coursework. Friedman called Bob Boden and asked if he could help brainstorm some ideas for the course.

Friedman says, “90 minutes later, Bob [sent] me a fully formed 13-week production course schedule. It turned out that this was something that Bob had already tried to create for UCLA, and they didn’t move forward with it. We modified maybe 10 percent of Bob’s original idea, just because the entertainment business had changed enough in that time that the class had to reflect those changes, but everything we needed was already there.”

Students who are interested can take three classes over a series of semesters. They begin with a class called “Get in the Game,” an introduction to game and reality competition shows. The second semester is called “The Game Plan,” focusing on how to develop game show formats and sell them to production companies, networks, and media platforms. The third semester, “Hands on Buzzers,” explores the ins and outs of how to produce a game show.

The professors are game show production veterans Stuart Krasnow, Shannon Perry, Sean Loughlin, and Joey Ortega. Ortega taught high school for three years prior to going into game show production, and that academic background was partly why he was asked to help teach these courses.

Ortega says, “Cal State LA is interesting because there’s such a mix of students. Some are later-in-life students who want to change careers, some are 22 and just about to step in the real world. For the game show curriculum specifically, a lot of our students are media majors; film and television production majors. Many of them hadn’t thought of game shows as a pathway to a career. They came here thinking of a media career in terms of ‘filmmaking’ and the game show classes have taught them that there’s this other route that they can take.”

At a time when the media landscape is in flux, and the way people consume entertainment has changed so drastically in only a single generation, Ortega has been fascinated by learning about what his students already know, and delighted by the opportunity to expand their horizons.

“A lot of my students tend to come into the class knowing Deal or No Deal, Wipeout, and Family Feud. These are the shows that they’ve grown up with. It’s so much fun to introduce them to classic games and get their reactions. I love showing my students Pyramid, particularly the Winner’s Circle round. You can see it in their faces—they are locked in when they see the Winner’s Circle; that game has their full attention every time.”

Harry Friedman says, “I observed classes a couple of times and was blown away. Not just by what the students were learning, but by their creativity, their teamwork, and their work ethic. There were so many transferrable skills being taught in these game show classes that they will be able to take with them no matter what they may end up doing.”

The game show curriculum is still quite new but has already shown the potential for creating careers and impacting the genre. In several weeks, a pilot will be recorded for a new game show format that was developed by a student in the Cal State LA classes.

Friedman explains, “Everybody in the class will be part of the team making the pilot. There will be schedules, deadlines, assigned roles and duties, budgets. Everything involved in making a pilot, and it’s going to involve these students.”

——————————————————————————————————————————

The author of this article majored in radio & television with a focus on journalism because it was the closest thing available to a game show curriculum. The author seethes with envy at a new generation of college students who have the chance to watch Let’s Make a Deal and The Price is Right because they’re doing homework.

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Reaching back into the 1950s, the Chow Scow feeding dish was poised to dock at your toddler’s highchair. The plastic dish with divided compartments (can’t have the peas touch the creamed chicken!) was designed to hold hot water to help keep food warm while a fussy eater stalled over a suspicious vegetable. The box also declared that, when it wasn’t ashore at the kitchen table, the dish also worked fine as a “sand and water toy.” I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have sand in my food, but maybe I’m just picky that way.

Moving up to the 1990s, breakfast got a little brighter when you had a Rugrats Talking Cereal Bowl. The Rugrats animated series aired on Nickelodeon for nine seasons, beginning in 1991 and generated a playroom’s worth of licensed merchandise. This cereal bowl features the oldest and bossiest Rugrat, Angelica. Thank goodness that when Angelica speaks up through your cereal, she merely announces “Wake up and smell the oatmeal!” rather than her signature phrase, “You stupid babies!” Who needs more insults thrown across the breakfast table?

I recall being an exceptionally obedient kid, but I do remember getting scolded on occasion for blowing bubbles into my milk through a straw.  With Kermit the Frog perched on this curlicued straw, it seems to be asking for some sort of mischief involving beverages.

You know what makes mealtime more fun? The folks who produced the Food Face plate (which came in male and female versions) thought that it might involve offering kids the chance to play with their food on the dinnerware equivalent of the Wooly Willy toy from the 1950s. You could top off the cartoon face on the plate with a hat made of peas or a swirl of spaghetti hair. Add green bean eyebrows or a mushroom mustache to complete the composition. It was all in good fun and in the cause of promoting healthy eating—along with a little creativity.

I admire any fearless parent who chose to bestow a Zing! teaspoon on their offspring. Maybe their kitchen had easy-to-clean vinyl wallpaper since the slogan for the spoon was “Launch your Lunch.” The package even featured a convenient diagram showing how you could bend the coiled spring handle to catapult your carrots across the table at your little sibling. Bullseye!

Finally, for something slightly more sophisticated, there’s the French Toast! bread stamper that let you impress your Wonder Bread with an image of the Eiffel Tower before inserting it into the toaster. As the toaster gave the slice a golden tan, the indented Parisian image would remain pale as would the exhortation “Bonjour!” The label on the package announced that the result would be “très chic,” although I suspect that any resident of the French Republic would cry a little over their croissant to witness what Americans were doing with their food and cultural heritage.

So the next time playful inspiration strikes you at mealtime, know that you’re following in a lengthy tradition. And, if you’re inspired to send me a photo of yourself with French fries sticking out of your nostrils, I’ll be glad to add that image to the other food-related fun here at The Strong Museum.

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As I catalogued a collection of these at-home escape room games at The Strong, labels began to fail me. While some were certainly legible as board games, others stretched the limits of the term. I’ve faced similar challenges before. In 2021, I published a paper about “escape games,” a broad genre label I applied to digital and analog games in which players solved puzzles to escape from a room. Some of the earliest live-action escape rooms were inspired by online “escape the room” adventure games, and the escape room has itself inspired virtual reality and at-home versions. I suggested the term “tabletop escape games” to refer to portable escape room games designed for play in the home or classroom rather than dedicated escape room facilities. I’ve since switched to the term “escape box” because I believe it better represents the breadth of approaches at play. As we’ll see, many of these games leave the table behind.

But what is it that escape box creators are trying to capture? Scholar and game designer Scott Nicholson provides the following definition of escape rooms: “players trapped in a space [have] to rely upon their wits and each other to find hidden objects, solve a series of puzzles, and accomplish tasks to get out in a certain amount of time.” The live-action escape room facilities counted in the Escape Room Industry Report are buildings players visit to play the games, but board game publishers and escape room companies have also endeavored to adapt the experience for the home. The key elements in Nicholson’s definition, including puzzles, cooperation, space, hidden objects, and time limits, manifest in various forms and to differing extents in each of these at-home games.

Some escape boxes attempt to emulate escape rooms while hewing close to board game conventions. Clue: The Midnight Hotel is a spin-off of the classic board game Clue that, like Clue, tasks its players with solving a three-part mystery by searching for clues in a series of rooms. After selecting a character and the matching plastic pawn, players take turns exploring the rooms of the Midnight Hotel. The game merges the classic board game with the collaboration and puzzle-solving emphasized in Nicholson’s definition. As players explore, they draw cards that introduce objects used in puzzles or provide clues necessary for solving the final mystery. Clue’s competitive race to deduce the culprit is replaced with a cooperative puzzle-solving experience. One might expect an escape box developed by an escape room company to depart more drastically from what we expect from a board game. The Escape Game, one of the largest escape room chains in the United States, released their own escape box, Escape from Iron Gate, in 2019. However, Escape from Iron Gate also draws primarily from board game conventions. While the game includes puzzles and ciphers, it also incorporates elements of classic party games like Pictionary and charades. Like many board games, but unlike most escape rooms, the game is competitive; only one player can escape the titular prison.

Other escape boxes appear to be conventional board games before quickly subverting those expectations. While many make use of standard game components like cards, they often break with the way those components are typically employed. Nathan Altice’s article “The Playing Card Platform” identifies properties of playing cards that enable common forms of gameplay. The randomized shuffling that is core to so many card games is possible because the cards are uniformly shaped, and the card backs are indistinguishable from one another. Many escape boxes, however, intentionally abandon these properties. The cards in Space Cowboys’ Unlock! series, for instance, are not uniform; each has a unique number prominently featured on the back. This unusual characteristic enables an interesting item combination mechanic that harkens back to the digital adventure games that inspired early escape rooms. As the players accumulate items, they can use them with one another. To combine two items, players add the numbers of the two cards together and reveal the card matching the sum. Combining the tutorial mission’s card 11, a key, with card 35, a locked cabinet, reveals card 46: the cabinet, now unlocked. By abandoning a core element of card games, Unlock! introduces a novel puzzle-solving mechanism that brings to mind both the live-action escape room and its digital predecessors.

Rather than repurposing conventional game components, some other escape boxes introduce unusual game pieces. These games blur the boundaries between the players and the fictional world. Escape rooms are all-encompassing. When the door is closed behind the players, they are cut off from the outside world and surrounded by a fictional one. Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment achieves a similar effect by foregoing the components of the usual tabletop game entirely. The game world’s objects are represented not with cards or tokens but with plastic petri dishes and locked metal tins. The use of bespoke physical objects is again reminiscent of adventure video games. Many classic adventure games came packaged with maps or other physical objects called “feelies.” In her article “The Treachery of Pixels,” scholar and historian Carly Kocurek argues that feelies operate as extensions of the game world. “Players can handle a feelie and by extension, at least in a small way, touch the world of the game—which in turn, via the feelie, extends into the players’ lived world.” Although escape boxes cannot physically envelop the players like live-action escape rooms, they have found their own ways to bring players into contact with fictional worlds.

Some games go as far as to abandon the table entirely, subsuming the surrounding playing space into the game’s fictional world. There are no plastic pawns on a board, here. Instead, both Escape Box: Pirates and Escape Your House: Spy Team require a game master to position the game’s cards throughout the room itself. Spy Team goes a step further by utilizing multiple rooms. The game includes one primary lock meant to be hung on the front door as well as several cardboard doorknob hangers that “lock” off other rooms. In the game’s fifth mission, the players’ home becomes the Hackers’ Hideout. An ordinary living room or bathroom transforms into the hideout’s server room or control room. In these games, the exploration of physical space is paramount to the escape room experience. These games differ, though, in their approach to objects hidden in that space. Escape Box: Pirates sees the search for hidden objects to be crucial to the escape room experience, instructing the game master to hide the cards for players to find. Spy Team asks the game master to make its cards clearly visible, focusing the players’ attention on using the cards rather than finding them.

Finally, escape boxes also vary in how they approach time limits. The almost ubiquitous one-hour time limit imposed by escape room facilities is a scheduling convenience that allows groups to sign up for hourly time slots. The pressure of the ticking clock is seemingly so integral to the genre, however, that it appears in many escape boxes, which do not have to adhere to scheduled time slots. The turn-based structures of The Midnight Hotel and Escape from Iron Gate stand out in comparison to the frantic real-time puzzle-solving of many of the other games. The Unlock! series requires a mobile app that counts down the players’ remaining time. The underwater adventure The Nautilus’s Trap makes clever use of the clock, utilizing it to represent the oxygen remaining in the players’ air supply. Starting with only 35 minutes, players can add to the timer by finding oxygen tanks hidden throughout the card art. But unlike the live-action escape room, you can keep playing these games even after clock runs down. I won’t tell.

From the components they use to the ways they handle space and time, escape boxes are indicative of varying understandings of the escape room genre. Are these games about immersion in a fictional world? About finding hidden clues? About teamwork? That escape boxes tackle the challenge of adaptation in such differing ways makes sense, given the myriad influences that shape live-action escape rooms themselves. Scott Nicholson’s 2015 survey of escape room facilities revealed that creators were inspired by video games, interactive theatre, live-action role-playing, movies, and TV shows, among others. Neither escape rooms nor the games inspired by them are monolithic. Even the goal of escape is not universal. Live-action escape room designers have refused to limit themselves to tales of escape—Nicholson’s survey also found that 30% of rooms did not require the players to escape a room at all.

By combining elements from board games and escape rooms, escape box creators make games that do not fit neatly into either category. Designers continue to explore the edges of these genres. Some are investigating ways in which other forms of play might intersect with escape rooms. The Toy Factory, a jigsaw puzzle in Ravensburger’s Escape Puzzle series, adds a short narrative hook to the puzzle-solving experience and hides riddles and clues in the completed image. Other creators are reversing the adaptation process, instead designing escape rooms based on board games. In 2024, live-action escape room company Breakout Games teamed up with Hasbro to create an escape room based on Monopoly. Working in this nebulous space between genres requires thinking outside the box.

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As I begin a new decade of my life, I’ve become more aware of the toys that model real-world “adulting.” Pretend play is a childhood staple, and often it involves kids performing what they see adults do. I’ve also realized, with a bit of my now developed adult cynicism, that it was a lot more fun to pretend to be an adult. The real thing doesn’t always measure up.

Take chores for example. Sweeping up with a fake broom or running a fake vacuum across the floor was way more fun than my now never-ending struggle to keep the cat hair out of my carpet. Cleaning the dishes is so much more fun when they don’t actually have food on them. I think it’s the lack of actual need to do the chores that makes the pretend chores more fun. I could flit around the house with my big fluffy duster as a kid, not properly cleaning anything, possibly making it worse, but there wasn’t any actual consequence. Dust is now my mortal enemy with its endless cycle of settling on surfaces.

Cooking is also way more fun when it’s fake. It’s so easy. You can “chop” up your food, stir it in a bowl, dump it on a plate—they’ll all say they love it because that’s their job as adults—and then you can just dump it all back in the basket. No recipes are needed because everything comes out perfect with just the right flavor. Who can beat that? The grocery shopping is so easy too. Super Kids Market is way more fun than the real Wegmans. I don’t have to spend real money, the food never goes bad, and nothing requires prep time. There’s no such thing as perishables in the world of fake food! And let’s be honest, even when we graduate to whipping up cookies in our Easy Bake Ovens, the simplicity, speed, and abundance of desserts means it’s always a good time.

I also held so many careers as a kid. Not to mention the work was so easy! Being a doctor required no medical degree, no actual understanding of the human body, and no charts. I was a super spy using totally real (definitely not toys) spy equipment without any risk of international crisis. I was the caretaker of dozens of animals that were miraculously healthy despite empty food bowls, inconsistent care, and multiple predator/prey combinations housed together. The work environment was great. I set my own hours, had unlimited time off, wasn’t subject to performance expectations, and could do all my work from home. I may have earned no money as well, but I had no bills so that was fine.

I have to say, I think the truest betrayal was the expectation set by the economy during childhood play. Every cash register was full, customers were always stopping by, and they never got to keep anything they bought, so it was pure profit. The board game Pay Day (the 2000 edition specifically) was popular in my house, but I’m beginning to think it established some false impressions about finances. I closed a lot more deals, won a lot more lotteries, and got a lot more bonuses in that game than I do in real life. My finances were way less complicated. Same thing with The Game of Life. The houses I bought and the sizes of the families I had in that game are completely unattainable.

The Game of Life in general needs some attention for its delivery of unrealistic expectations for life. I’ve ended my “life” winning a Nobel Prize, being elected mayor, writing a bestseller, and having six children, all while working as an artist and retiring to Countryside Acres. How was that supposed to prepare me for the expense-to-income ratio of late-stage capitalism? Why can’t I press CTRL + Shift + C and type the “motherlode” cheat code 300 times like in The Sims 2 and then live a life of luxury with my magically acquired wealth? Maybe Hasbro had it right when they released The Game of Life: Quarter Life Crisis (Now with Crippling Debt!).

Perhaps the last six paragraphs of complaining are also a cover for a certain melancholy that comes with thinking about a time in my life with fewer worries and more imagination. Maybe there’s a kid inside me begging to set aside the have-to-do for more of the want-to-do. Maybe it’s the rose-colored glasses that come with nostalgia. Maybe it’s a symptom of millennial burnout, pressure, and anxiety. Or maybe it’s just easier to yell into the abyss, “What gives?!”

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The two-part documentary Pee-Wee as Himself, now available for streaming on HBO Max, chronicles actor Paul Reubens’ unexpected rise to fame as the character Pee-Wee Herman. As the documentary explains, game shows had a small role in the rise of Reubens and his bizarre alter ego.

Reubens’ earliest shots at the big time came from The Gong Show. He and actress Charlotte McGinnis appeared on the daytime show as contestants, calling themselves “Betty and Eddie’s Sensational Sound Effects,” in which they acted out an old-time radio show and performed all the necessary sound effects with their mouths. They won the grand prize of $516.32 and were invited by the show’s staff to appear on the nighttime version of The Gong Show; they performed the act again and won the grand prize again.

While many game shows have rules prohibiting contestants from returning, The Gong Show creator/producer Chuck Barris ran his show very differently. There was no limit to how often a person could be a contestant. The only restrictions were that returning contestants had to audition just like anybody else, and that returnees had to do a different act for every audition that they attended. Reubens would perform on The Gong Show, then devise a new act, and call the show to make an appointment for the next audition. By his own count, Reubens appeared on the show 14 times.

Reubens credited the show with giving him unexpected financial security at an unstable time in his life. Chuck Barris courted members of SAG and AFTRA, two performers’ unions (they have since merged) with the promise that he would pay union members “scale”—an established minimum guaranteed payment for a television performance. At the time it was about $250 for each of those 14 performances. Barris also promised royalty payments and delivered when he sold Gong Show reruns to local stations. Reubens received a windfall check for royalties covering the next several years’ worth of Gong Show reruns. Reubens later said that he called off his search for a day job, living off Gong Show money while he was developing material for his theater show.

Reubens created the character of Pee-Wee Herman for a Groundlings performance. Originally, the premise was that Herman was a bad stand-up comic who had trouble remembering the punch lines of his jokes. But Reubens kept adding extra details—playing with toys, throwing candy at the audience, doing bizarre things with his voice—until the character became completely different.

America first met Pee-Wee Herman on another Chuck Barris game show, The Dating Game. Shortly after Reubens developed the character, he was looking through classified ads; Chuck Barris’ staff had placed a large ad seeking people to be contestants on their shows, and Reubens had the inspired idea to audition for The Dating Game, fully in character as Pee-Wee. Reubens, sporting the now-iconic gray suit and red bowtie, walked into the room among 200 dashing young studs and immediately realized that all the attention was on him.

Herman, introduced by host Jim Lange as a comedian whose interests included bird watching, trapeze, and tightrope walking, is still in something of a “beta testing” stage as a character. Watching The Dating Game now, a Pee-Wee Herman fan would notice that the voice isn’t quite right, and that he has thick hair pressed tightly against his head with a gob of grease, as opposed to the short haircut he sported later.

 Reubens actually successfully made a date on his first appearance. As with The Gong Show, he was encouraged to return to The Dating Game a few more times. Unlike The Gong Show, he was not asked to change a thing for The Dating Game. He returned as Pee-Wee Herman. Even if it is not quite the character you know, it’s easy to see why Chuck Barris’ staff was enamored with him. The bachelorette flirtatiously asked, “What do you think of when you hear the word ‘go’”? Pee-Wee responded with an awkward story about driving his Volkswagen Bus to traffic school, and even the other two bachelors get caught on camera chuckling at his odd behavior.

As a follow-up, she said she didn’t like it when a date made things “too easy” for her and asked Pee-Wee how he’d make things a little tough for her. He pledged to wear a tight-fitting bodysuit under his clothes during their date. Jim Lange audibly lost it, guffawing and taking a second to collect himself.

In the seven years following his last shot at The Dating Game, Reubens as Pee-Wee Herman had launched a successful theatre show, adapted that into an HBO special, made 11 show-stealing appearances as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman, starred in a feature film, and launched his own Saturday morning network kids’ show. As Pee-Wee fans and keepers of game show history, we take a little pride in the role that Chuck Barris and the game show genre played in his rise to stardom.

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Ding. Ding. Ding. People of a certain age may remember the sound of cranking the elevator on the Fisher-Price parking garage, or the way the stop sign at each floor lowered when the lift reached that level. This ingenious plastic contrivance raised cars up and down the three-level garage, tipping them out when they reached the floor. I still recall not only the auditory experience, but also the tactile hitch as the wheel turned a gear and the momentary stutter as it completed a rotation. For a little kid, there was something deeply satisfying about raising and lowering cars in this elevator.

Elevators have been one of the great engineering accomplishments of the modern age. Since Otis introduced the safety elevator for people in 1857, the device has enabled builders to construct higher and higher buildings, in the process revolutionizing architecture and facilitating the growth of dense cities. It even became a commonplace reference in popular culture, including the 1912 song “Elevator Man” by Irving Berlin about Andy, a lift operator, who won the heart of his passenger Mandy, a cook in the building (alas, Andy couldn’t stay on the level after he started giving rides to a gal named Sal).

The design of the elevator itself has not changed radically—elevators are still largely mechanical contraptions, the product of pulleys, cables, winches, gears, and engines—and perhaps their simple elements explain why they have become so popular as toys. Our collection certainly holds plenty of examples. Early Meccano construction sets offered numerous opportunities for kids to make functioning, if miniature, elevators (Meccano toys were basically the European equivalent of the American Erector set, though they were invented earlier and tended to be more complex). Meccano’s 1915 guide for “How to Make Models and Toys with Meccano” includes plans for structures with elevators, including a “Warehouse with Elevator” that functioned in many ways like the real thing.

Construction toys are not the only ones that have included play elevators, for some doll houses have featured them as well. In The Strong’s collection is a magnificent dollhouse, made in Germany, from around 1900, simply titled “Elevator House” in our internal records because its most dramatic feature is a lift in the center that can bring guests up three stories.

Perhaps the most well-known doll house to feature an elevator is Barbie’s Dream House. When first introduced in 1962, Barbie’s fabulous digs didn’t come with an elevator, but as her living quarters got larger and more elaborate one was added in 1974, when Barbie moved into a townhouse. Of course, sometimes the elevator needed adapting. Barbie’s friend Share a Smile Becky, introduced in 1996, used a wheelchair that wouldn’t fit into the elevator in the existing Barbie Dream House, a problem Mattel later corrected.

Elevators are not the exclusive property of pretend play sets, for they are also a common feature in video games. In the arcade classic Donkey Kong (1982), they were a physical challenge—can you jump on the moving elevator without falling? The next year, Taito’s Elevator Action challenged players to assume the role of a spy using stairs and elevators to outmaneuver the guards.

In most video games, however, elevators are used mostly as scene shifters. When you get on the elevator you leave one room and enter someplace completely different, allowing for an easy change of setting. The early procedurally generated dungeon crawler Telengard (1982), for example, used elevators to move players up, unexpectedly, to higher levels. In graphical adventures like Sierra’s Police Quest or the puzzle game Myst, elevators allowed easy scene swaps. The surprise that always ensues when the door opens adds to the fun. In some games like Mass Effect (2007), elevator rides had the primary purpose of disguising the amount of time it was taking the game to load.

Given their ubiquity in everyday life, the power they bestow to move us up and down, and the surprise they produce when the door opens, it’s likely elevators will continue to be a common element of many playthings. And why not? They are fun little devices that can give us a lift when we play with them.

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