Behold 3 New Entrants Into Toy Hall of Fame

Wiffle Ball and game of Clue among them
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Nov 9, 2017 12:29 PM CST
Toy Hall of Fame Gets 3 New Entrants
This undated photo provided by The Strong museum shows the three toys inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. From top left, the Wiffle Ball, the paper airplane, and the board game Clue.   (Victoria Gray/The Strong via AP)

The National Toy Hall of Fame is getting three new entrants, and they're familiar ones: the board game Clue, the Wiffle Ball, and the paper airplane, reports the AP. This year's other finalists were the game Risk, Magic 8 Ball, Matchbox cars, My Little Pony, Pez candy dispenser, play food, sand, Transformers, and the card game Uno. Details on the winners:

  • Clue: The whodunit game, where players also must name the crime scene and murder weapon, continues to sell millions of copies each year since being patented by a British couple during World War II. "Clue has also had its own movie, been featured in numerous television shows and books and remains an icon of pop culture," says Hall of Fame curator Nicolas Ricketts, who added that the game has spun off travel, junior, and advanced versions, as well as collectors and themed editions.

  • Wiffle Ball: Like Clue, the Wiffle Ball remains a big seller more than six decades after it was invented by a retired semi-pro baseball player in Connecticut whose son had given up on regular backyard baseball for lack of space and too many broken windows. David Mullany began by cutting holes in round plastic parts from a factory, eventually developing a ball with eight oblong slots that allow the ball to grab air and change and slow its trajectory. A strikeout was called a "wiff," according to the family-owned Wiffle Ball Inc., which has produced millions of balls each year ever since.
  • Paper airplane: Exactly who made the first paper airplanes is unclear, though artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci gets credit for designing flying machines out of parchment in the 15th century. "Where some toys require financial investment, paper airplanes start with a simple sheet of paper, coupled with creativity and dexterity, to produce a toy with infinite aeronautical possibilities," says Christopher Bensch of The Strong museum in Rochester, NY, where the Hall of Fame is located. "They allow the imagination to take off and soar."
(More toys stories.)

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