ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — When curators at the National Toy Hall of Fame learned last fall that the Fisher-Price Corn Popper had been voted in as part of the class of 2023, they knew they had some serious work to do.

With a formal induction ceremony approaching, they would have to figure out how to showcase the beloved toddler push toy with colorful balls that ricochet around a clear dome.

It isn’t as simple as going to Walmart and pulling one off the shelves: The National Toy Hall of Fame, is an part of The Strong National Museum of Play in upstate New York. MOP aims to show how its toys have endured and evolved over the years — pieces go from wood to plastic, electronics are added.

That means digging through archives, auctions, the internet and garage sales to hunt for an original, or one close to it — a process repeated with each new hall of fame inductee.

“We want some recognizable things currently on the market, but we also want people to say, ‘Oh, I had one of those!’” said Christopher Bensch, chief curator at the Strong museum, which is a larger-than-life interactive toybox for kids and adults.

For example, when the jigsaw puzzle was inducted in 2002, they added one of the world’s first versions, a map of Europe pasted onto a thin mahogany board from 1766, alongside a child’s Donald Duck board puzzle from 1990. Not all of the toys inducted into the hall are specific products, either — 2021’s inductee was simply “sand.”

In the case of the Corn Popper, the curators needed to find something recognizable to generations. The toy has been around since 1957 and more than 36 million have been sold, according to Fisher-Price. Nearly 650,000 visitors would arrive over the next year to view it and the hall of fame’s other vaunted toys.

Vaults, garage sales, eBay

After being voted in by experts and fans, many hall of fame toys are pulled for permanent display from the museum’s vast archives.

The honorees are usually so iconic — the Barbie doll, the teddy bear, checkers — that the odds are good there will be multiples among the half-million or so objects already in the ever-expanding collection.

But staff is always on the lookout for playthings worth saving — keeping an eye on eBay and garage and estate sales, especially if a toy is already in, or seems bound for, the hall of fame.

With new toys on the market all the time, curators can only guess what might be the next Etch A Sketch, a mechanical drawing toy that’s still popular and virtually unchanged after 100 years, and which toys will fizzle.

“We want to be the repository for them, for the nation or the world,” Bensch said. “That’s why we have 1,500 yo-yos in our collection, or 8,000 jigsaw puzzles,” he said, naming two past inductees.

Some of the stored board games, stuffed animals, doll houses and other molded, cast and carved reminders of childhood have been donated by manufacturers. Others come from private collectors following a death, divorce or move. A parent recently donated a collection of 1,600 American Girl dolls and accessories after their child outgrew them.

Some items are pursued at auction, the way a fine art museum might acquire a masterpiece. That’s how The Strong landed one of its most prized possessions, an original Monopoly set, hand-painted on oil cloth in 1933 by inventor Charles Darrow before the game went into mass production. With Monopoly in the hall of fame since 1998, the winning $146,500 bid at Sotheby’s in 2010 was over budget — but worth it.

“We’re the National Museum of Play. If we were the Henry Ford Museum and we didn’t have the first Model T, we would kick ourselves ever after,” Bensch said.

Other Inductees 2023