‘More fun than a barrel of monkeys’
The troll doll was created in the late 1950s by a Danish fisherman and first gained popularity in the United States in the early 1960s.
Mr. Potato Head was first manufactured by Hasbro in 1952.
C-3PO and R2-D2 were hugely popular after the first “Star Wars” movie was released in 1977.
Gumby was a popular toy after his cartoon hit the airwaves in the mid-1950s.
American girls started playing with Barbie dolls in 1959. This is Skipper, Barbie’s younger sister.
PITTSBURGH – If the key to an ancient civilization can be found in shards of pottery or dirt-encrusted coins, it could be the key to our civilization can be found in Mr. Potato Head.
Or Barbie. Or Howdy Doody.
That’s the central proposition put forward in the large-scale exhibit “Toys of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” which opened at the Senator John Heinz History Center Friday and will be there through May 31. Developed by the Minnesota Historical Society, “Toys of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s” emphasizes the gadgets and gizmos that were stuffed in toyboxes and lingered in bedrooms from the Eisenhower epoch to the dawn of Reagan tell not just a tale of an industry, but of America. The plastic contraptions, board games, skateboards and bouncing balls reveal the vast changes in American society as televisions moved into family rooms, women moved into the workplace and men went to the moon.
“‘Toys …’ tells us a lot about who we are,” said Andy Masich, the history center’s president and chief executive officer. “It’s going to teach us some things about the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The exhibit is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. You’re going to be allowed to play and let out your inner child.”
Each of the three decades in the 8,000-square-foot exhibit gets its own recreated living room, with a television set from each era showing commercials for toys. While children have always played with toys, the confluence of the postwar baby boom and the arrival of television laid the ground for a toy explosion. Commercials that aired during favorite programs could lead a toddler to tug on mom’s sweater and insist the toy must be purchased, and then a whole raft of toys were created around television series that enchanted boomers and the generation that followed, from Roy Rogers to “Sesame Street” and “Star Trek.”
“There was a symbiotic relationship between television and the toy industry,” Masich said.
Emily Ruby, a curator at Heinz History Center, pointed out how toys from the 1950s emphasized what were then traditional gender roles and expectations: Girls could play with sewing kits, while boys could play with construction sets. Toys also started to allow children to imagine careers for themselves once they reached adulthood, as illustrated by a crime detection kit. In 1970s, some computer-based toys, like the Digi-Comp 1, started to appear, presaging the revolution in information technology that blossomed in the 1990s. That revolution was led in part by people who probably played with the Digi-Comp 1.
Although American childhood for the last half-century or so is supposed to be a period where the conundrums of the outside world are kept at bay, the all-too-real concerns of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s are reflected in “Toys …” The Cold War race with the Soviet Union is manifested in assorted toy science kits; the strides made by the civil rights movement led to the creation of toys designed to reflect a more diverse market; and revulsion over the Vietnam War led to G.I. Joe being refashioned as being part of an “action team” rather than a soldier.
Toys were also spun off from environmental movement that gathered speed in the early 1970s, and a greater emphasis was placed on the educational value that toys could possess, as indicated in all the playthings that were spun off from “Sesame Street” after its debut in 1969.
There’s also a section of the exhibit dedicated to toys that make you wonder what their manufacturers were thinking when they brought them to the market, from guns that look too realistic to “Jarts,” the backyard lawn darts that were as sharp as spears.
Although “Toys From the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s” offers a kind of lesson in recent history, it also has its share of colorful fun. It’s interactive, so visitors can engage in Slinky races, play with Nerf balls and try their luck with vintage arcade games. It’s also unabashedly nostalgic – parents can bring children to show them what they played with once upon a time, said Anne Madarasz, museum division director at the history center.
Several special events are scheduled in conjuction with the exhibit, including a “playtime” for adults aged 21 or older on Thursday nights through March 31 that will have games, drinks and a retro candy bar, a look at toys made in Pittsburgh April 21 and a pinball game night May 13.