 | Science Meets Science Fiction
Discover the otherworldly collection of Dr. Mark Glassy.
It was the fall of 1956, when Glassy was 5 years old and went to see Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, the sci-fi shocker that featured the stop-motion genius of Ray Harryhausen. “That really changed everything for me. It hit me in a way nothing else did. It sparked my imagination about the way things can go and the things you can do. I left the theater a completely changed person,” Glassy explained, adding a science-fiction or sc...
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 | Skittles
It doesn’t pay to knock these pricey ninepins.
Give a boy a ball; he’ll throw it. Set up a frame of skittles; he’ll delight in rolling a flopper, which is the same as a strike in skittles parlance.
Skittles, a form of the bowling game ninepins, has been played in Europe since the 3rd or 4th century, but for children the game blossomed fully—and all too briefly—in the workshops of German and French toymakers in the late 1800s.
The colorful figural skittles, which ...
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 | For Your Amusement
Novelty attractions from the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair run the gamut from humorous to bizarre.
If you’re old enough to remember the Century 21 Exposition, better known as the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, you probably associate it with the iconic Space Needle and much-publicized Alweg Monorail that shuttled visitors around the pavilions and other sights at the history-making international extravaganza. But if you were fortunate enough to actually be one of the 10 million people w...
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 | My Near-Fatal Attraction
. . . With the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri and the Grumman F9F Panther Jet.
The Korean War started as the two rival governments of Korea entered into a civil war in 1950. The United States government portrayed the conflict as part of a larger Cold War plan of communist aggression, encouraging the United Nations to vote to back the South Korea government. Shortly thereafter 15 nations, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and France, sent troops, aircraft, weapons and su...
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 | Toys are us
Ten Great American Toy Classics.
Words like “classic” and “evergreen” are non-distinct adjectives—by themselves, they mean little. But when they’re used to describe the toys of our collective history, they speak volumes. Countless toys have been made, but few can be considered classic and evergreen in the canon of toy history.
While the task of naming American toy classics was an exciting and fun challenge, the harder part was narrowing the list to just 10 i...
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 | Full Circle
When the tire market went flat, Auburn Rubber made toys.
Amid the economic hardship of the Great Depression, one company would struggle and fail while another in the same community would overcome adversity and grow. One such place of feast or famine was Auburn in northeast Indiana. Auburn Automobile Co., a manufacturer of expensive luxury cars, exemplifies the former; toymaker Auburn Rubber Co., the latter.
Auburn Rubber Co. likely would have suffered the same fate as its neighboring automaker...
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