Toy Hall of Fame 2025 Inductees Announced
Three favorite toys, Battleship, Trivial Pursuit, and slime, are the latest to join the Strong Museum of Play’s Toy Hall of Fame.
The Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong Museum of Play announced its 2025 inductees on November 6. This year, the classic strategy game Battleship, brain-teasing Trivial Pursuit, and stretchy, squeezable slime have been chosen to join the ranks of what the museum calls “some of the best and most important toys of all time.”
Battleship was first published in 1967 by Milton Bradley, but similar war games have been played since the 19th century, if not earlier. While earlier versions were played with paper grids or with cardboard screens and wooden pegs, Battleship introduced folding plastic grids and plastic pegs. Advertising during Saturday morning cartoons helped propel the game to early success, and the game kept up with the times. Later, an electronic “talking” version was released, and the game was adapted to a computer version in the 1970s.
Curator Mirek Stolee cites “Battleship’s place in popular culture history” as one reason for its induction. There have been versions based on popular movie franchises, such as Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean, and even a movie loosely based on the game itself in 2012.
Attention, trivia buffs: What’s the best-selling Canadian board game of all time? If you answered “Trivial Pursuit,” you’re right. Journalists Chris Haney and Scott Abbot invented the game in 1979 and produced it through their own company in 1981, then licensed it to publisher Selchow and Righter in 1982. In 1983, it sold 1.3 million copies. The rights were acquired by Parker Brothers in 1988 and then transferred to Hasbro in 2008. Trivial Pursuit may be something of an oddity in the Toy Hall of Fame, since it was meant to mainly appeal to adults. However, numerous variations, including sports and pop culture themes, a TV game show, video game adaptations, and a daily online quiz, have made it enjoyable for the whole family.
Slime comes in many forms, appropriately for a moldable, malleable toy. Wham-O produced stretchy pink Super Stuff in the 1960s, but, despite its popularity, it got eclipsed by Mattel’s Slime, introduced in 1976. Mattel leaned into the gross-out aspects of the gelatinous goo, coloring it neon green and packaging it in plastic trash cans, and kids loved it. Slime, as a generic term, has taken on a new life online; a quick search of social media yields hundreds of videos from creators demonstrating its tactile properties or providing instructions on how to make your own. As a bonus, kids can get a chemistry lesson along with their creative and sensory play.
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