Visitors to the new exhibit TOP SECRET: Mission Toy will enter a secret research and experimentation facility, the “Toy Central” headquarters of a global toy conglomerate.

Their mission—should they choose to accept it—is to use their investigative skills to check out toys from around the world and put their imaginations to work in designing new playthings.

The lively, colorful environment is inspired by, and in part spoofs, the language and style of the popular genre of spy films, books, and television programs.  Activities are designed to highlight the universality of play and toys in childhood around the world, as well as to highlight (perhaps more for the benefit of grown-ups) that toys help develop skills. 

“Sometimes adults overlook the value of play in a child’s development,” says Carol Enseki, president of Brooklyn Children’s Museum. “TOP SECRET: Mission Toy helps reveal the importance of toys to a child’s cognitive, social, and physical development, and shows how common the socialization processes are around the world.”

“But at its core, it’s a fun exhibit for children.  A child’s need to have fun is universal.”

Visitors stepping into the “Toy Central” facility walk through a “biometric sensor” that assesses their level of inherent toy expertise.  Regardless of age, each person is given the role of Toy Expert and assigned to the International Toy Task Force.  They don white lab coats, have top-secret clearance, and are granted full access to all areas within the headquarters facility.

In the research department, kids can use clues and a cipher wheel to figure out the global origins of nine toys. Correct determinations light up the toys’ countries with pulsating lights on a large worldwide map. Nearby, investigators can peruse research files and specimens of the world’s most played-with toys. They can open up the files to find clues that help identify a toy, like an African car made from a cut-up soda cans or a Rubik’s Cube—and learn how kids use them in other parts of the world. Visitors can also discover some of the different materials and designs that go into toys by matching x-rays of mechanical robots and electronic dogs to their three-dimensional counterparts. 

Over in the engineering department, children and families can explore the process of manufacturing toys at a lab table by creating figures or vehicles from wooden components or using spars and disks to build the tallest tower.  Global brainteasers present more challenges; step-by-step hints help people figure out traditional Chinese tangrams and a wooden marble maze from Switzerland.  Another lab table features tops of different shapes and sizes from all over the world, where visitors can refine their hand/eye coordination while they try to see who can make their top spin for the longest amount of time.

The field training department has a collection of dolls from around the world, from Russian nesting dolls to Japanese dolls made from kimono fabric—their job is to help Toy Experts get ready for an assignment in a new country with new language skills.  Kids and adults can practice words and phrases from the dolls’ home countries; and they can record and play back their own pronunciations. Children can also open a secret briefcase and try matching soundtracks of mystery noises to photographs of the toys that made them.

Creativity is unleashed in the prototyping department, where kids can draw and write about their favorite toys, or design new ones and explain how they would work.  The “Toy Central” archives are also located here, with books and resources to provide inspiration. Kids can also try their hands at one of the world’s oldest, most common toys by using string to make a cat’s cradle or a witch’s broom.

“People are going to love this exhibit,” says the Museum’s incoming president, Georgina Ngozi.  “There’s something central to humanity in the acts of creating toys and playing with them.”

 

 

TOP SECRET: Mission Toy was created by the Canadian Children’s Museum as part of the Youth Museum Exhibit Collaborative (YMEC), a consortium of nine leading North American youth museums. 

 

 

Sponsored by:
		LEGO Children’s Fund
Promotional Sponsor:

 

 

TOP SECRET: Mission Toy is the latest exhibition in the Museum’s Chase Gallery, our new home for visiting exhibitions, generously donated by Chase. The Chase Gallery hosts a changing schedule of new traveling exhibitions from across North America every three to four months.