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01 Mar
Posted by Yehuda Berlinger as Electronic Games, Modern Board Games, Other
Earlier this month,Time Magazine posted their list of the 100 greatest toys from the last 87.5 years (yeah, me neither).
Leaving aside the usual bickering over this or that toy that should have made it to the list (we have Mattel Electronic Football but not the PSP or Atari?), as well as the rather odd items on the list (Little Golden Books???), I still have two major issues with the list:
First, the list is entirely US-centric, and is actually better titled “100 fairly well-known or influential proprietary toys on the US market from the last 87.5 years”.
Second, games are very poorly represented on the list, both analog or video games. I could understand this if they excluded games altogether; then the title of the list could also have been understood to include the phrase “free-form single-player non-competitive” in it. But we have Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Simon, and Mindflex, as well as the aforementioned Electronic Football. And that’s it for games.
Not Monopoly? Uno? Dungeons and Dragons? Pokemon?
Whatever.
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Sigh…if you look at the National Toy Hall of Fame it’s a similar situation with VERY FEW games. It’s very disappointing since some of the classics have been entertaining multiple generations.
Monopoly is not in there because it’s not a game from the last 87.5 years, or even the last 100 years. It’s slightly more than 100 years old so I guess old Uncle Pennybags is too grey for Time Magazine.
I don’t generally consider games to be in the same category as toys. They’re marketed as such, but only used in a remotely similar context for small children. So I agree with the implication that they shouldn’t have included even the 4 games that they did.