Drivers passing the Museum of Science and Industry may be forgiven for thinking that Santa unloaded some holiday gifts there that he meant to deliver to a family of giants. A 26-foot-high Radio Flyer stuffed with an 11-foot-tall teddy bear and other Christmas presents towers over visitors outside the north entrance. The toys, a temporary sculpture, signify that MSI has added something new for the holidays.
Interspersed among the museum’s famed “Christmas Around the World” trees in the West Wing are the approximately 20 display cases and interactive stations of “Kid Stuff,” a memory-evoking exhibit of classic toys that range from Matchbox cars, the Flyer and View-Master to Mr. Potato Head, G.I. Joe and Barbie.
“Kid Stuff” is a traveling exhibit assembled by the Pittsfield Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., with writer David Hoffman, author of “Kid Stuff: Great Toys From Our Childhood” (Chronicle Books, $15.95). In between stops in Shelburne, Vt., and Duluth, Minn., the exhibit’s Chicago visit could not have been timed better, according to MSI traveling exhibits manager Tasymyn Scarl Front.
“I had heard about it. Once I saw it I thought it was a great thing to have here for the holidays. Holidays are about memories,” Scarl Front says.
“Kids will be excited about playing with some of the same toys their parents did. And they will be excited to know that their parents also played with toys,” says Front, explaining that youngsters can move items on the Mr. Potato Head display and race cars at a Hot Wheels station.
Her favorites include the Spirograph, an interlocking wheel arrangement that creates complicated designs, and Colorforms, a vinyl cut-outs kit for making scenes, designs and people.
“Everyone has different memories. I saw these and thought, `Oh, yes. I haven’t thought about these in a long time,’ ” she says.
And anyone who remembers making pizza or cookies in a kiddy-size Easy-Bake Oven, low powered by two 100-watt light bulbs, should appreciate the cooking demonstrations that have been planned by some of Chicago’s high-powered pastry chefs. Using current, similarly powered, contemporary-styled Easy-Bake Ovens, chefs from Bittersweet, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Park Avenue Cafe and Royale Icing Inc. will make and decorate desserts from Dec. 20 through 23.
The demonstrations are a chance for people to, as the saying goes, have their cake and eat it, too. Visitors can decorate pre-made cakes and snack on them with milk, compliments of the Dairy Council of Wisconsin.
“The Easy-Bake Oven got many kids baking back in the ’60s. Maybe it will inspire a generation of chefs,” events and special programs director Anne Rashford says. “This is not just for kids, however. It’s a fun event. I think we’d have a hard time keeping adults away from it.”
Rashford also points out that toys and back-in-time reflections are not confined to “Kid Stuff.”
New to the museum’s holiday celebration are a Millennium Walking Tour of the museum; a 35-foot-tall MSI tree in the Rotunda that is decorated with toys and has an antique sleigh, bicycle and Flyer at its base; and a new Fiberglas cow, Christmas Around the Cow, standing in the Great Hall.
“We all know Chicagoans are very fond of their cows,” she says.
Also recently opened, at the museum’s Yellow Stairwell exhibit space and in conjunction with “Kid Stuff,” is “Out to Lunch,” a new permanent toy exhibit of about 500 fast-food chain meal premiums that includes Disney and Super Mario Brothers spin-offs and other popular children’s characters.
“People have been coming here during the holidays for 58 years because of the trees. It’s a tradition. We have even come out with a book this year called `Traditions’ ($19.95). We’re just adding to the memories with `Kid Stuff’ and with additional programs, many of which tie in with the toy theme,” Rashford says.
The other programs are, alone, worth the trip over to 57th Street, according to collections curator Michael Sarna.
“We’ve done a lot of new things with `Christmas Around the World.’ It’s a tradition but we also wanted it to be fresh and do something different. It’s why we are doing `Kid Stuff’ and why we’re putting a rare, 1955 Columbia 5-Star bicycle and a rare National Radio Line Flyer under the (MSI) tree,” he says.
As to the fast-food toy exhibit, which is a small sampling of a 5,000-item collection that was recently donated by a Chicago-area couple, Jeff and Marilyn Escue, Sarna sees mounting the exhibit as a “no brainer” for the museum.
“We now have the world’s largest collection of fast-food toys. People wonder why we were interested. But there is the connection to science,” he says, noting that the exhibit explains how they are made from polyvinylchloride using injections molds.
“And it relates to kids. They really enjoy the exhibit. Just about every cartoon character that existed is in the collection (not all on display),” says Sarna, whose favorites are the Cone Head pencil toppers.
Above all, he hopes visitors will take time to do at least part of the Millennium Walking Tour, a visit of 100 “Millennium Moments” from the past 1,000 years.
Although people do not have to follow the Millennium Tour Map in sequence, Sarna recommends that visitors start at a small orientation exhibit by Cafe Spectrum on the ground floor.
“It starts you off right by explaining what a millennium is. People get confused between millennium, which is a thousand years, and century, which is 100 years. And they think this year is the beginning, but it is 2001,” he says.
Indeed, the museum will be the place to come during the next holiday season, when a spectacular, recently acquired clock exhibit opens, according to Sarna. He predicts that at a certain hour on the appropriate day, all the clocks will chime.
“There will be no better place to be. It will be a timely start to the new millennium,” Sarna says.
“Kid Stuff” and “Christmas Around the World” and its adjunct, “Holidays of Light,” a multicultural display of ethnic holiday customs, are on exhibit now through Jan. 2 at the Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive; 773-684-1414, also www.msichicago.org. Open daily from 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday except for the following special holiday hours: 9:30-4 p.m. Dec. 24, 30 and 31, 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Dec. 26-29. Closed Dec. 25. Regular hours resume Jan. 1. Special holiday event times: ethnic performances are at 11 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:45 p.m. and 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 19 and 2 p.m. Jan. 2. “Shall We Dance,” part of Chicago’s “Dance ’til Dawn of the New Millennium,” is from 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 31. Easy-Bake Oven decorating workshops are at 1 and 2 p.m. Dec. 20 and 1 p.m. Dec. 21-23. Free with admission tickets available in the Great Hall. Museum admission is $7 adults, $6 seniors, $3.50 children 3-11, under 3 free. Thursday free.
