The Barbie display of popular culture artifacts at the Arizona Popular Culture Museum at City North.
by Jennifer McClellan The Arizona Republic Mar. 12, 2010 11:55 AM
Certain toys - Barbie dolls, G.I. Joes, Star Trek figures and Matchbox cars - are so ingrained in American popular culture they span social, ethnic and generational divides. At Phoenix's first museum devoted exclusively to popular culture, a Phoenix man pays homage to toys that are more than just playthings.
Using his personal collection of nearly 10,000 items, John Edwards opened the Arizona Popular Culture Museum in a 4,700-square-foot space at CityNorth on March 5. He hopes the museum will inspire visitors to think about the connection popular culture has with science, technology and education.
"This stuff is memory- and thought-inducing," Edwards said, pointing to the hundreds of small boxes filled with toy superheroes, baseball players and dolls. "Hopefully, it stirs something in people and makes them think."
That's just what toys can do, said Jack Hirsch, advisory board member of Arizona State University's Center
for Film, Media and Popular Culture. Hirsch, who has been in the toy industry for 45 years, working with companies such as Mattel and VTech, said toys like those at the museum are essential to childhood development.
"Playing with toys from an early age really becomes the way children discover things (about the world)," he said. "Child's play is also their natural work."
For Edwards, a Major Matt Mason toy astronaut sparked his lifelong interest in science. The toy ignited his imagination, he said, and led him to pursue an education in physics and mathematics. While he never became an astronaut, Edwards graduated with a master's of science degree from the University of Arizona and worked as an aerospace engineer.
Now retired from engineering at 51, his story is the kind of scenario Edwards hopes to create for children who visit the museum. That's why Edwards developed partnerships with 17 school districts, from Scottsdale to Peoria, Cave Creek to Chandler. Perhaps, he says, the baseball exhibit will spawn an interest in statistics, or the "Lord of the Rings" display a love of creative writing.
"A kid is only as successful at school as he is engaged," Edwards said.
Edwards doesn't want the toys to teach children only about math and language. He hopes the learning will extend to social aspects by creating bonds between people of all ages. Take the Peanuts characters, he says, standing next to a variety of Lucy, Snoopy and Charlie Brown figures. They've remained popular since Charles M. Schulz drew them in comic strips starting in 1950.
"Everyone knows 'A Charlie Brown Christmas,' " he said.
Developing a sense of community is what popular culture does, says Peter Lehman, director of ASU's Center for Film, Media and Popular Culture.
"To some extent, popular culture gives us common touchstones in our culture, regardless of race, class or gender," he said. "People can talk about these common experiences and feel a kind of commonality."
And not just the sense of community enjoyed by Trekkies, Edwards says, a self-proclaimed "nerd" himself. Rather, there's a nationwide sense of a shared past, present and future.
"One hundred years from now, stuff like this will be a historical record. It's a legacy."
