What's On Display at Feldberg Library

The original classic book Home-made Toys for Girls and Boys - Wooden and Cardboard Toys, Mechanical and Electric Toys.

Shooting far, flying high, and delivering way more exciting results than expected are the goals of the gadgets in Rubber Band Engineer. Discover unexpected ways to turn common materials into crafty contraptions that range from surprisingly simple to curiously complex.

From the origins of favorite playthings to their associations with events and activities, the study of a nation's toys reveals the hopes, goals, values, and priorities of its people. Toys have influenced the science, art, and religion of the United States, and have contributed to the development of business, politics, and medicine.

What's the difference between a tile and a plate? Why isn't it a good idea to stack bricks in columns to make a wall? How do you build a LEGO mosaic or build at different scales? You ll find the answers to these and other questions in The Unofficial LEGO Builder s Guide.

Discover how an Etch A Sketch writes on its gray screen, why a boomerang returns after it is thrown, and how an RC car responds to a remote control device. Leaving no detail unrevealed, the guide includes original patent-application blueprints and photos of the "guts" of several devices. Inventors and museum curators also offer their observations of favorite gizmos while dispelling (or confirming) several toy legends. Complete with explanations of do-it-yourself experiments and tips on reverse engineering old toys to observe their interior mechanics, this entertaining and informative reference even provides pointers on how budding toy makers can build their own toys using only recycled materials and a little ingenuity.

This updated and revised edition of David Joyner’s entertaining "hands-on" tour of group theory and abstract algebra brings life, levity, and practicality to the topics through mathematical toys. Joyner uses permutation puzzles such as the Rubik’s Cube and its variants, the 15 puzzle, the Rainbow Masterball, Merlin’s Machine, the Pyraminx, and the Skewb to explain the basics of introductory algebra and group theory. Subjects covered include the Cayley graphs, symmetries, isomorphisms, wreath products, free groups, and finite fields of group theory, as well as algebraic matrices, combinatorics, and permutations.

In Anime's Media Mix, Marc Steinberg convincingly shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Beyond its immediate form of cartooning, anime is also a unique mode of cultural production and consumption that led to the phenomenon that is today called "media mix" in Japan and "convergence" in the West. Steinberg traces the cultural genealogy that spawned Astro Boy to the transformations of Japanese media culture that followed--and forward to the even more profound developments in global capitalism.

In The Cult of LEGO, Wired's GeekDad blogger John Baichtal and BrickJournal founder Joe Meno take you on a magnificent, illustrated tour of the LEGO® community, its people, and their creations. The Cult of LEGO introduces us to fans and builders from all walks of life. People like professional LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya; enigmatic Dutch painter Ego Leonard (who maintains that he is, in fact, a LEGO minifig); Angus MacLane, a Pixar animator who builds CubeDudes, instantly recognizable likenesses of fictional characters; Brick Testament creator Brendan Powell Smith, who uses LEGO to illustrate biblical stories; and Henry Lim, whose work includes a series of models recreating M.C. Escher lithographs and a full-scale, functioning LEGO harpsichord.

A wide-ranging look at surrealist and postsurrealist engagements with the culture and imagery of childhood   We all have memories of the object-world of childhood. For many of us, playthings and images from those days continue to resonate. Rereading a swathe of modern and contemporary artistic production through the lens of its engagement with childhood, this book blends in-depth art historical analysis with sustained theoretical exploration of topics such as surrealist temporality, toys, play, nostalgia, memory, and twentieth-century constructions of the child.

Providing guidance on a broad range of issues for young children and adolescents, Ergonomics for Children: Designing Products and Places for Toddlers to Teens give you a deep understanding of how children develop and how these developmental changes can influence the design of products and places for children. Copiously illustrated with photos and other images, the book helps you quickly find answers to your questions, grasp concepts, and apply them. Its subsections are organized to help you locate and understand the content you need. Edited by experts with contributions from an international panel, the book is both broad in coverage and international in perspective. The contributors review the ways in which children develop physically, perceptually, cognitively, and socially and then use this information to provide practical guidelines for the design of places and products for children.

Generations of comic book readers remember the tantalizing promises of vintage novelty advertisements that offered authentic laser-gun plans, x-ray specs, and even 7-foot-tall monsters (with glow-in-the-dark eyes!). But what would you really get if you entrusted your hard-earned $1.69 to the post office? Mail-Order Mysteries answers this question, revealing the amazing truths (and agonizing exaggerations) about the actual products marketed to kids in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Pop-culture historian Kirk Demarais shares his astonishing collection, including: 100 Toy Soldiers in a Footlocker Count Dante's World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets GRIT Hercules Wrist Band Hypno-Coin Life-Size Monsters Mystic Smoke Sea Monkeys Soil From Dracula's Castle U-Control Ghost Ventrilo Voice Thrower ...and many, many more!

Wooden puzzles are fun to solve, but with this guide to the almost perfectly square sticks, rings, disks, and other shapes that they require, they are even more fun to make. Twelve puzzles of four different basic types are described in this guide, along with the tools and techniques needed to make them. There is also expert advice on the woods, glues, and finishes that will give the best results. These puzzles are beautiful and intriguing objects in their own right, and they offer woodworkers a delightful means of sharpening their skills and astonishing their friends.

Shows Japanese tinplate robots, space stations, astronauts, and spaceships which were made in the fifties and sixties.

This book traces the history of American toys from the 18th century through 1987, emphasizing not only the toys themselves but also the people who invented them, the companies that manufactured them, and the ways in which social, political, and technological changes affected the toy business.

Mattel's iconic products have been a part of our culture for generations.Author Jerry Oppenheimer places the world's largest toy company under a journalistic microscope, uncovering the dark side of toy land, and exploring Mattel's oddball corporate culture and eccentric, often bizarre, cast of characters. Based on exclusive interviews and an exhaustive review of public and private records, Toy Monster exposes Mattel's take-no-prisoners, shark-infested corporate style.

The first major book about the toy business, a world of influence, fantasy, and multimillion-dollar Hollywood deals, "Toy Tycoons" takes readers inside Hasbro to witness corporate restructuring, a makeover of G.I. Joe, the collapse of a $45 million virtual-reality game, and a takeover attempt by arch rival Mattel.

A pictorial review of celluloid dolls, action and non-action figures.

A pictorial review of vehicle toys operated by spring, friction, battery, or electricity.

A pictorial review of hi-tech toys of yesterday, mainly of the 1940s to 1960s.

Relive the creation of G.I. Joe as told by members of the original team of Hasbro toy manufacturers. Follow the development of Joe from his beginnings as a soldier in the 1960s, to an adventurer in the 70s, and his reintroduction to a generation of backyard warriors in the 80s and 90s.