Memory Moment: The Power of Play!

One of my favorite Mark’s Museum offerings is Mark’s Museum Mobile. This element of Mark’s Museum is a traveling toy museum experience. (Shout out to Shawn Butler from Ohio and his Yesteryear Funland Traveling Toy Museum, who inspired Mark’s Museum Mobile!) I love sharing my vintage collection with others and seeing the joy that comes from the curiosity and connections that are created through the experience of vintage toys, games and other vintage things.

One of the biggest champions for the mobile experiences is my friend Jan. Jan is my life-long friend and incidentally…eh hum…my co-host and co-curator of our podcast The Memory Mercantile. Jan has been there along many of my life-journey moments. On several occasions, Jan has reached out and asked me to share Mark’s Museum Mobile experiences with the Utah Bleeding Disorders Foundation (formerly the Utah Hemophilia Foundation). One such experience I gave Jan a much-wanted vintage toy to say thank you and her reaction is a highlight (See the TV Room on the Mark’s Museum Website to share in that moment).

My most recent experience with the UBDF was a request from Jan to provide a breakout session for teens at their 2026 Family Education Weekend in South Jordan, Utah. This particular mobile experience introduced The Retro Games, a Olympic-styled competition incorporating vintage toys and games. I was excited and honored to share Mark’s Museum Mobile again with this group.

After setting up, arranging the conference room, and nervously awaiting the teens’ arrival, I was ready to go! The group of about sixteen 12- to 17-year-olds sauntered in, some in small pairings, some alone, but the general sense seemed to be indifference and “what is this all about?” With the help of Jan’s daughter Lexie and a volunteer Luke, we were ready to go. The group was divided into four “teams.” I’m fairly certain that most, if not all, of the participating kids were on teams without other family members or people they knew well. There may have been a sibling or two on a team, but for the most part, they really didn’t know each other all that well from what I could gather. We even reassigned at least one participant to another team to not be on a team with their sibling.

Given a small posterboard, markers, glue sticks, construction paper pieces and a pair of scissors, the teams were given the charge to introduce each other, make a team “flag,” and come up with a team name. The names they came up with were interesting and probably indicative of the ages represented – The Marker Team (as in magic markers), The Glue Sticks, The Quite One (stated to be the Quiet One, spelling “typo” unintended), and The Best…yes, just, The Best. The team flags were simple yet fun given the tools to make their flags, and Lexie and Luke did a great job of getting the kids to connect at a basic level. After the completion of flags, there was a sort of parade of nations, so to speak, where the teams walked past the crowd of spectators – the other team participants – and stuck their flags on the back wall of the conference room. With teams formed, flags raised, the games began!

The competitions were comprised of such challenging “events” as:

• Skittle Bowl - the classic tabletop tether-bowling game by Aurora popularized in the 1960s and 1970s;

• Nuttsy Tennis - a two-player tabletop action game released by TOMY in 1974;

• Battling Tops – by Ideal from 1968 where players launch spinning tops into an arena with the aim to have the final standing spinning top;

• Tupperware Toys Pop-A-Lot toy, a catch-and-shoot game originally made in the 1970s where players use plastic, trumpet-shaped handles to shoot and catch small plastic balls; and culminating with,

• Stay Alive – the classic board game from Milton Bradley in 1971 where the goal is to keep your marbles on the board while sliding levers to make your opponents' marbles drop through hidden holes. The last player (team in this case) with a marble on the board wins.

It was so fun watching these kids interact with these vintage games. Their wonder, their curiosity, their “this is weird” looks, their spirited competition, but overall, their joy and laughter as they completed in their teams was, well, inspiring for this vintage toy guy.

By the end of the competition, the winning team had been declared and they received their “gold medals,” the subsequent second-place team received their “silver medals,” the following third-place team received their “bronze medals,” and the fourth-place team received participant medals. I was amazed that although this competition was set up for winners and losers, the participants cheered and jeered each other on in fun fashion – a testament to many of today's youth, especially this group, and their feelings of inclusion, belonging, and respect.

After the Retro Games were done, we had about an hour until lunch to fill with free play, and conversation. One particular interaction really stood out to me…it was as two young men who were playing with the Tupperware Pop-A-Lot toy. In true kid fashion, they were seeing how many ball pops they could catch consecutively, how many trick shots they could make, evening bouncing the plastic ping-pong type ball off the walls and ceiling…sometime diving to make the catch. I asked one of the boys if the two knew each other before today…by the way, the two had competed on different teams…his answer was a simple no, but they were “bros” now. “Bros” being my word because I think that’s how they described their newly discovered friendship. A simple toy like the Tupperware Pop-A-Lot…something from the 1970s, connected two similarly aged kids, who lived fairly far away from each other, who had never met before…brought them TOGETHER!

I walked away that day feeling refreshed, full of joy, and with the hope for a future that is bright, where we all can work TOGETHER with inclusion, belonging, and respect.

THANK YOU TEENS FROM THE UTAH BLEEDING DISORDERS FOUNDATION!!!