A few weeks ago, Nic Ricketts, the museum’s games curator, and I traveled to Chicago to attend the second annual TAGIE Award dinner and explore the world of toy and game inventors. Our first stop was the design studio of Lund and Company Invention. The firm and its founder, Bruce Lund, are probably best known for TMX Elmo, but they’ve created dozens of other fun and famous playthings as well. We felt honored to get a peek behind the scenes.

From there, we made our way to Navy Pier where Nic and I appeared as part of TAGIE’s two-day seminar for new toy and game inventors. We were excited to share information about Strong National Museum of Play with a group of eager inventors and to learn firsthand about their creations. Nic’s high point for the afternoon was meeting Leslie Scott, the creator of Jenga, who was promoting her new book and playing Jenga with her fans.