National Toy Hall of Fame announces this year’s inductees

Two games and the bane of parents’ existence have been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame for 2025.

Battleship, Trivial Pursuit and slime made the cut for induction this year, beating such nominees as lightsabers, corn hole, the Furby, and Tickle Me Elmo for the honor.

The idea behind Battleship goes back to 1890, when E. I. Horsman Company created Basilinda, where opponents use wooden pegs to represent an army, with their boards blocked by a cardboard screen, the Hall of Fame said. When the screen is moved, and an army is opposite to the opponent’s placement, it is taken off the board. Russian officers played a similar game in World War I on paper, where they would guess the secret locations of a ship or army and drop bombs or fire shots. Salvo introduced a grid system in 1931. Milton Bradley created a pencil and paper version of the game called Broadsides: The Game of Naval Strategy, which led to Battleship in 1967.

Trivial Pursuit has been around for four decades and has players race to answer questions on a variety of topics and fill their pie-shaped game piece. It was developed by Canadian journalists Chris Haney and Scott Abbott in 1979 and was produced by their company Horn Abbott Ltd in 1981. It had a first run of 1,100 copies before they licensed it to publishers Selchow and Righter in 1982. In 1988, Parker Brothers licensed the game before Hasbro bought the rights in 2008. It has been able to stick around, evolving from a board game to a television show and then a video game, the Hall of Fame said.

The final item inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2025 isn’t a toy per se, but it can be fun for kids, and a headache for parents. Slime is made from a chemical process between borax or sodium tetraborate and guar gum or polymers, which allows it to be "stretched, squeezed, broken apart, and molded back together like magic." Mattel introduced Slime in 1976, at a time when similar products, including Wham-O’s Super Stuff, were already on the market for about 10 years. Other toys, such as the Masters of the Universe’s Hordak’s Horde Slime Pit and Ghostbuster toys, used slime as part of their draw. It is now a DIY toy that kids and parents can mix themselves at home with basic ingredients. And when the inevitable happens, and it gets into clothes, hair or carpeting, some ice, white vinegar or dish soap can help remove it.

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