‘Toys’ are as versatile as a child’s imagination

Published 3:37 pm Friday, November 21, 2008

Just in time to inspire an old-timey, scaled-back Christmas, the National Toy Hall of Fame inducted the stick into its ranks of classic toys.

The stick, most often made of wood (not to be confused with its evil cousin, the switch), was chosen to join the Strong National Museum of Play’s lineup of 38 classic playthings, including the bike, the kite, marbles, crayons, the cardboard box and Mr. Potato Head. Joining the stick in the 2008 inductee class are the “baby doll” and the skateboard.

(If you have an older sibling(s), go ahead and relive the horror of your doll strapped helplessly to your brother’s skateboard, screeching down the driveway, headed for certain doom.)

The curators, AP reports, praised the stick’s “all-purpose, no-cost recreational qualities, noting its ability to serve either as raw material or an appendage transformed in myriad ways by a child’s creativity,” managing to take most of the fun out of it.

Christopher Bensch, the museum’s curator of collections, is happy to beat the concept to death: “It’s very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price — there aren’t any rules or instructions for its use,” he said. “It can be a Wild West horse, a medieval knight’s sword, a boat on a stream on a slingshot with a rubber band. … No snowman is complete without a couple of stick arms, and every campfire needs a stick for toasting marshmallows.”

But hey, isn’t the curator going to note for the record that those things can poke an eye out?

The curator also fails to comment on the universal ability of boys, even if they have been shielded by well-meaning, peace-loving parents — especially if they have been shielded by well-meaning, peace-loving parents — to turn a stick into a gun, even (or especially) if they have never seen a gun, heard the word gun, etc. Which is fine, because it’s just a stick. Get over it. It’s not a predictor of later violence, unless of course he’s using it to hurt someone, instead of “transforming it with his creativity,” which used to be known as “play” or “pretending.”

(Great moments in stick humor: What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back to you? That’s correct.)

In the future we hope to see these no-frill and timeless “playthings” join the stick in the National Toy Hall of Fame, as chosen by a focus group of toddlers to 5-year-olds:

Clangy pots and pans.

Mom and Dad’s clothes closet.

The dog’s tail.

The vacuum. (Split vote. Either fun or frightening.)

The Wii stick-throwing video game. The kids insist that’s the dog’s idea.