They made 36 million Corn Poppers. Here's how they pick the right ones for the Toy Hall of Fame

abcnews.go.com:

Before the National Toy Hall of Fame inducts a new class each fall, curators at the upstate New York attraction have to figure out how to showcase the honorees

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — 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 hall, part of the The Strong National Museum of Play in upstate New York, 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