A look behind the scenes at the National Toy Hall of Fame

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — When curators at the National Toy Hall of Fame learned last fall that the Fisher-Price Corn Popper had been voted in as part of the class of 2023, they knew they had some serious work to do.

With a formal induction ceremony approaching, they would have to figure out how to showcase the beloved toddler push toy with colorful balls that ricochet around a clear dome.

It isn’t as simple as going to Walmart and pulling one off the shelves: The hall, part of the The Strong National Museum of Play in upstate New York, aims to show how its toys have endured and evolved over the years — pieces go from wood to plastic, electronics are added.

That means digging through archives, auctions, the internet and garage sales to hunt for an original, or one close to it — a process repeated with each new hall of fame inductee.

“We want some recognizable things currently on the market, but we also want people to say, ‘Oh, I had one of those!’” said Christopher Bensch, chief curator at the Strong museum, which is a larger-than-life interactive toybox for kids and adults.

For example, when the jigsaw puzzle was inducted in 2002, they added one of the world’s first versions, a map of Europe pasted onto a thin mahogany board from 1766, alongside a child’s Donald Duck board puzzle from 1990. Not all of the toys inducted into the hall are specific products, either — 2021's inductee was simply “sand.”

In the case of the Corn Popper, the curators needed to find something recognizable to generations. The toy has been around since 1957 and more than 36 million have been sold, according to Fisher-Price. Nearly 650,000 visitors would arrive over the next year to view it and the hall of fame’s other vaunted toys.

Vaults, garage sales, eBay

After being voted in by experts and fans, many hall of fame toys are pulled for permanent display from the museum’s vast archives.

The honorees are usually so iconic — the Barbie doll, the teddy bear, checkers — that the odds are good there will be multiples among the half-million or so objects already in the ever-expanding collection.

But staff is always on the lookout for playthings worth saving — keeping an eye on eBay and garage and estate sales, especially if a toy is already in, or seems bound for, the hall of fame.

With new toys on the market all the time, curators can only guess what might be the next Etch A Sketch, a mechanical drawing toy that's still popular and virtually unchanged after 100 years, and which toys will fizzle.

“We want to be the repository for them, for the nation or the world," Bensch said. “That’s why we have 1,500 yo-yos in our collection, or 8,000 jigsaw puzzles,” he said, naming two past inductees.

Some of the stored board games, stuffed animals, doll houses and other molded, cast and carved reminders of childhood have been donated by manufacturers. Others come from private collectors following a death, divorce or move. A parent recently donated a collection of 1,600 American Girl dolls and accessories after their child outgrew them.

Some items are pursued at auction, the way a fine art museum might acquire a masterpiece. That's how The Strong landed one of its most prized possessions, an original Monopoly set, hand-painted on oil cloth in 1933 by inventor Charles Darrow before the game went into mass production. With Monopoly in the hall of fame since 1998, the winning $146,500 bid at Sotheby's in 2010 was over budget — but worth it.

“We’re the National Museum of Play. If we were the Henry Ford Museum and we didn’t have the first Model T, we would kick ourselves ever after,” Bensch said.

An eBay find

Babies have been toddling behind Fisher-Price Corn Poppers for more than 60 years, but finding a “historic” one in pristine, museum-display condition proved challenging.

“Those are toys that get used pretty hard,” Bensch said, “especially early versions with that plastic dome and the wooden balls hitting against it. Those did not survive in great condition.”

What eventually went on display were two versions. One is a 1980 model purchased on eBay from a woman in Canada, who likely has no idea her castaway — its wear and tear evident in its dinged-up and slightly cloudy dome — is now a museum piece. The other is a shiny new version that is still on store shelves for about $12, with a sleeker blue handle and beefier red wheels that reflect slight design changes over the years.

“It was hard to find a photogenic one that went back more than a few decades,” Bensch said. “I’m not sure we eventually got one that was as old as we wished for, just because they had been so well loved.”

What makes a toy a hall of famer?

Each year, a new class of toys makes it into the hall of fame, the culmination of an annual process that invites anyone to nominate their favorite toy online.

Museum staff culls the nominees to 12 finalists before a panel of experts votes in the winners. Eighty-four toys have earned the honor since the hall opened in 1998.

Nominees can be as lasting as steel erector set creations, inducted in 1998, or as fleeting as bubbles blown through a plastic wand, honored in 2014.

Many inductees are a reminder that the true value of a toy isn’t necessarily in the price, but the play. In 2008, an ordinary stick from a tree — but a no-cost sword or magic wand to a child — was inducted into the hall, but Flexible Flyer sleds and the Rubik’s Cube did not make the cut that year. The Easy-Bake Oven was bypassed in 2005 — by the cardboard box it might have shipped in.

The museum received 2,400 nominations for 382 different toys for the class of 2024.

This year’s 12 finalists include Apples to Apples, balloons and the trampoline. Also: “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, Hess Toy Trucks, remote-controlled vehicles, the stick horse, Phase 10, Sequence and the Pokémon Trading Card Game, and two perennial nominees, My Little Pony figures — a seven-time finalist — and Transformers action figures.

From them, a chosen few will be announced and honored in November, and the curators will begin their hunt all over again