Stick, Skateboard, Baby Doll Added to the Toy Hall of Fame

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- The lowly stick could be a magic wand, a knight's sword or a fishing rod.
Now the universal plaything has landed in the National Toy Hall of Fame, along with Baby Doll and the skateboard.
The three were chosen Thursday to join the lineup at the Strong National Museum in Rochester, N.Y. Previous inductees include the bicycle, Mr. Potato Head, Crayola crayons and the cardboard box.
Curators say the stick is a special addition. They praised its all-purpose, all-natural, no-cost qualities. They also noted its ability to serve either as raw material or an appendage transformed by a child's imagination.

...and, might I add, they didn't have to find the "inventor" of the stick to make a lame speech at the induction...

Yes! The stick! I've built forts (well, lean-tos, mostly), I've had sword fights, and most importantly, I built a VISIBLE line that my sister couldn't cross. The only thing better than the stick was the cardboard box. A refrigerator box was a castle, a space ship. When you were small, a common packing box was a car! I feel sorry for the generations to come. With all of the advancements in technology that have been made in the past 20 years, fewer and fewer children are using their imaginations. Children don't play with toys anymore, the toys play with the children. Everything has to blink and light up, sing songs and talk to children. (The only "toy" we had that interacted with us was a Speak-N-Spell - and if you remember that thing, you know you couldn't make out what that mechanical voice was saying unless you read along with the word on the screen.)

Hey kids! Go outside. Play Hide-N-Seek, Ghost in the Graveyard, Tag, Hopscotch, Mother-May-I, Red Rover. Pull out a board game! Try to be the first children EVER to make Mousetrap work! Have one of those marathon Monopoly games that you have to put on hold for a few days and pick up next week! There are so many great games out there; Clue, Sorry, Parcheesi, CHESS, Twister. Pick up some crayons and draw, paint, sculpt with Play-Doh. Using your imagination is the BEST thing about being a child. It will exercise that important part of your brain that can lead to many fun and rewarding jobs like advertising, graphic design, fashion design, film, theatre, architecture.

Think about what this world would look like without imagination. There would be no Eiffel Tower, no Mona Lisa, no Sydney Opera House. No one would think the new Corvette looked cool because it WOULDN'T.

Take a moment, friends, and enjoy a retro day dream...

Legos. Tinker-Toys. Lincoln Logs. Cootie. Hungry Hungry Hippos. Erector Sets. Super Balls. Hot Wheels. Skip-Stick. Mud Pies. Running through a sprinkler. Catching fire-flies. Doing cart-wheels for hours. READING Nancy Drew. Drawing on the sidewalk with chalk.