Along with the Fisher-Price corn popper and Cabbage Patch Kids, that is.
Nerf balls and baseball cards – the most influential "toys" of my youth – were finally inducted to the toy shrine at the Strong National Museum of Play earlier this month after years of being passed over. The honor for Nerf balls came after me campaigning for them year after year after year.
It's about time.
Suitable for a toy that has been overlooked year after year, Nerf was overshadowed in the announcement. This time it wasn't because Nerf was outvoted by the rocking horse or the stick or Jenga. This time it was because Ken was bypassed by voters despite being the sneaky star of the year's biggest movie.
Ken can wait. He's used to being in the shadows (and did anyone ever get excited about a Ken doll? When it comes to toys, he's an accessory!). This is Nerf's year. And it's the year of baseball cards.
Anyone of my generation can (and should) join me in celebrating the indication of Nerf into the toy shrine, with the honor coming a full six years after its harder-shell cousin, the Wiffle Ball, was inducted. Want even more stunning news? The following toys were inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame ahead of the Nerf ball: jigsaw puzzles, the Game Boy, rubber ducks and Risk.
Over Nerf balls!
Nerf revolutionized how we play. The spongy ball (my first Nerf ball was just that. There was no Nerf basketball or Nerf football or Nerf gun. There was just a Nerf ball that I could throw at my sisters and see them flinch) changed indoor action.
I could bounce it off the wall and not have a parent yell at me. I could shoot it at the laundry basket, anticipating the creation of the Nerf basketball. Had none of the subsequent Nerf toys emerged, the Nerf ball still would be legendary and worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame.
Alas, it spawned an entire world of Nerf products.
It's a similar story for baseball cards. I've written about my baseball cards in the past, but their arrival was a harbinger of childhood spring and summer for me. Over the years – notably when I was in middle school – I collected and collected and collected. I had multiple years of complete sets of 660 (then 726) cards made by Topps. The fact that I know far more about mid-1970s baseball players than those on current rosters has something to do with age and memory, but it also has to do with those cardboard pictures with stats on the back.
(By the way, I sold my card collection a few years ago to a friend who helped get me started. Of course, I sold them shortly before a worldwide pandemic reinvigorated the card-collecting craze and doubled, tripled and quadrupled prices. Which is why I'm glad I sold them to a friend, not a business.)
The corn popper (that toy toddlers push around as they learn to walk) and Cabbage Patch Kids are also worthy honorees to the Toy Hall of Fame. But when historians look back on this class of the Toy Hall of Fame, they'll nod in agreement with the selection of baseball cards and shake their heads in alarm that it took this long – as part of the 26th class to be inducted – before Nerf made it into the Hall of Fame.
I'll now end my boycott of the Hall of Fame. If I somehow find myself in Rochester, New York, with a chance to visit, I'll go.
And I'll grab the Nerf and throw it at someone, seeing if they flinch like my sisters did.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment