If you’re of (ahem) a certain age, you may occasionally find yourself brooding on the fact that it’s very hard to get in a pinball game nowadays.
*Well, fret no more. You can get in all the games you like… in fact, more than you can handle… at the Strong Museum in Rochester.
*The Strong, which bills itself as the National Museum of Play, has set up a couple of dozen operating pinball machines, which you can tackle at a quarter apiece. Pull back the spring-loaded starter, flap those flippers, bounce the steel ball off the uprights and over the trip levers to the satisfying bing-bing-ching and bung-kachung, while lights flash and strobe, and you can drop all the way back to pre-computer days, when the world and you were young, and the pinball machine brightened the corner of the neighborhood newsstand.
*I played half a dozen machines from different periods, usually getting three balls for my quarter (plus any more I earned during play). Unsurprisingly, I found that some tilt easier than others! One had a set of suspiciously-short flippers. This left the open gate between them annoyingly wide, but it also meant that you didn’t get enough leverage for a good snap on those occasions when you COULD flip the ball.
*Pinball’s natural successor (and replacement) was the arcade video game, and there were at least as many of those in operation, even starting with the ur-game of Pong. Early Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man are still in action at Strong, though I was sorry not to find the original Space Invaders.
*Strong hosts the Video Game Hall of Fame, and a Hall of Fame for video game designers. Pinball was a 2018 inductee for the main Toy Hall of Fame, along with Uno and Magic 8-Ball. I like to prowl through the Hall of Fame area and meet old friends, from the stick and the cardboard box, through Barbie and Mr. Potato Head, on up to modern high-tech playthings.
*Strong Museum is always changing, and always bringing forth new exhibits. But old favorites also continue to pack in crowds – the life-size walk-in Sesame Street set, the Berenstain Bears space, the gallery of superheoes, the working carousel, and the indoor Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden are all as busy as ever.
*It’s not just for kids any more, as the old commercial said. We’re in our late 60s, and we’ve seen at LOT of changes in the museum over the years, and we love the place. Our younger son is 37, and he’s been three times in the past month – once with kids, once with a peer, and once with us.
*You can still eat in Bill Gray’s Restaurant at the Skyline Diner, which is the largest artifact in the collection, but there’s also a food court space nowadays. The butterfly garden has an additional fee, over and above museum admission.
*Some other special features include: a “Cartop” rowboat made locally, by Penn Yan Boats; an original circular Monopoly board, with circular card table; and a number of huge 19th-century dollhouses (familiar to those who know the museum from of old).
*A decade-by-decade exhibition of toys, games, and playthings ropes in Shirley Temple, Davy Crockett, Charlie McCarthy, and G. I. Joe; Scrabble; Twister; the Kenner View-Master; space toys; war toys; homemaker toys… the list is endless. As long as kids keep playing, Strong Museum will keep on growing.