Attaining playtime immortality is hard

One company was deployed on the upholstered easy chair, another under the coffee table. In moments they would advance onto the carpet to do battle.

Troops included riflemen – kneeling, standing and prone – men with bazookas, men ready to throw grenades, men with walkie-talkies and men simply crouching, rifle in hand, ready to advance. Most of them would proceed on foot, but some would go into battle on the back of a dump truck, in a fire engine or on the hood of a police cruiser.

(As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the army you have – not with the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”)

The engagement would end in a matter of minutes. Not one combatant would be left standing.

Fortunately, they would rise to fight another day. Some, in fact, would report for duty in the bathtub later that night.

These are the many (they came by the dozens in tubs or big plastic bags), the proud, the little green soldiers who fought and died ... and then fought and died again and again in apocalyptic battles staged mostly by young boys in homes around the nation. When America’s youth needed them, the trusty fighting men answered the call.

For that, and many other reasons, the little green troops were inducted last month into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame has been adding two or three new toys to its roster every year since 1998.

This year, along with the green army men, judges chose the Rubik’s Cube and bubbles – the kind that every kid makes with a little wand and a bottle of soapy water. According to the hall’s entry on toy soldiers, the plastic variety, first manufactured in the 1930s, replaced the lead and metal soldiers earlier generations had sent into battle.

Part of the attraction of the little green army men is the fact that they are cheap, plentiful and expendable. Hall officials noted that kids often blow them up with firecrackers, while others are doomed to spend eternity in drawers, stuck in couch cushions or in the corners of darkened attics and basements.

The entry also notes that “little green army men are about pretend play and about kids using their imaginations to create narratives, to work out tactics and to plot strategies.” The notion that the best toys are powered by the imagination seems to be a common thread connecting many of the selections made by judges over the years.

Extreme examples of minimalist toys that have made the list include the stick, the cardboard box, the ball and the blanket. This year’s finalists included the paper airplane and pots and pans.

While the Atari 2600 game system and Nintendo Game Boy have been inducted, most of the toys are pretty rudimentary – Silly Putty, the jump rope, the Hula Hoop, crayons, dominoes and Tonka trucks. Most are toys that require kids to do most of the work.

Unless you’re jumping, a jump rope is just a rope.

Maybe the judges are a bunch of curmudgeons who want to make a critical comment about the state of modern play and the predominance of computerized games. But that seems doubtful.

Instead, it seems, the panel of judges – which includes historians, inventors, educators, psychologists and curators of The Strong museum, where the Hall of Fame is housed – are looking at the long run, playtime immortality and toys with staying power. This year, a list of about 5,000 submissions was culled to 434 toys, which then were reduced to 12 finalists.

The process is painstakingly selective, and toys that had a meteoric rise but a short lifetime will never make the list. The chosen toys are meant to represent in some fundamental way not only what has been popular but also how children have played for centuries.

In other words, the little green army men had a long, hard march to the hall of fame. Fellas, give our regards to GI Joe when you get there.

This story was originally published December 4, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Attaining playtime immortality is hard."