Imagination Play It’s hard to believe that dinosaurs were discovered relatively recently in human history. Here’s some context to really put this into perspective: dinosaurs were discovered AFTER the invention of infrared rays, electricity, and general anesthesia! George Washington never even heard of the term “dinosaur” and Beethoven wrote his 5th symphony before dinosaur bones…

Superman and Batman kicked off the Golden Age of comic books and popularized the concept of the superhero with their debuts in the late 1930s. But did you know that pre-comic book versions of these characters were both bad guys? So much of what we know and love about the heroes today originated outside the…

Follow the incredible journey of Macallan’s 1938 Handwritten Label Scotch Whisky from barley to bottle Macallan’s 1938 Single Malt Scotch Whisky is rare. It’s housed in a wooden case, adorned in a red ribbon and wax seal, and its details written by hand in grand script across a creamy label. If one needed any indication…

Intro note: This write up is published in 2023, 400 years after the release of the First Folio. Globally, there are a lot of events celebrating this anniversary and you might be surprised what’s happening in your hometown libraries and museums. The New York Public Library is displaying six different copies of the First Folio…

Today, Michael Jordan is as well known for his performance on the basketball court as he is for the sneakers he wore during the game. His Air Jordan collaboration with Nike wasn’t the first sneaker deal, but it broke the mold and set the stage for a new type of player-centric brand. Though it’s hard…

It’s 2005, and somewhere in an imaginary bourgeois suburb of Hartford, Connecticut, Emily Gilmore is positively mooning over the fact that her Rory has been gifted a Birkin bag by her boyfriend, Logan Huntzberger. It’s a reaction lost upon her granddaughter, who earlier mused, “I went to school with a guy named Birkin.” If there…

If you grew up in the Nintendo Entertainment System era of the 1980s, you almost certainly played Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!. The boxing title was unlike anything else out at the time. The characters were huge and expressive. Opponents were more of a puzzle to solve instead of button-mashing fest. And Mike Tyson remains one of…

When the Soviet Union fell at basically the same time as Nintendo’s Game Boy was being released globally (1989), there was an unexpected overlap of two concepts powering towards international pop-culture supremacy – a newly open invitation to “exotic” Russian artistic history, and the realized dream of on-the-go gaming. Both were summoned onto Tetris –…

Back in 1966, the rival National Football League and American Football League decided to initiate a merger that would finalize in a few years. In the meantime, they agreed to have their two best teams face off in one epic championship game. On January 15, 1967, The NFL’s Green Bay Packers and AFL’s Kansas City…

When most people think of Moneyball, they think of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill waxing statistical while building an elite baseball team on the cheap. Truth is, Moneyball, in its original form, is a book by Michael Lewis that, while well reflected in the Sorkin-penned film script, took it’s time in espousing the rise of…

Or “The Glorious Collection of Historical Weirdos that Made Pokémon Possible”Or “How Pokémon is the Blessed Child of Victorian Botanists and Dungeons and Dragons”Or “How to successfully talk about Pokémon at dinner parties, happy hours, and Friendsgivings” Pokémon are beloved. They are the wind beneath our wings. Their love keeps lifting us higher. Pocket monsters…

Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon were the two hottest Card Games of the ‘90s. Individually, their most valuable cards command massive prices today. But in recent years, Pokémon/Magic hybrid cards were uncovered — sparking an investigation and the emergence of one of the most valuable CCG cards in the world. In 1990, a systems analyst…

Children of the ‘80s will never forget the sacred ritual of starting up a game on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The VCR-like, front-loading console design had its reliability issues, but when it was working, the NES created blissful core memories for an entire generation. Over 60 million consoles were sold worldwide and Nintendo’s dedication to…

In the fall of 1966, two hippie artists were tasked with creating a concert poster for the Grateful Dead’s show at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. Coming in the first year of the band’s existence and prior to the release of their first album, The Dead was not yet the worldwide phenomenon they would…

Here’s the thesis: Batman’s first self-titled comic book told four stories that have generated more entertainment dollars per page and more consistently year to year than nearly any other piece of printed fiction; and seeing the Dark Knight in costume for decades (on screens big and small, with all kinds of tones) prepped all of…

The start of the classic hero’s journey is marked by a symbolic shift, the departure of the mentor and the arrival of the hero to take their place. Whether the mentor dies, like Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, or simply passes on their knowledge to the hero and rides into the sunset, it’s a…

There are people who owe Boba Fett an apology. And the list starts much earlier than you might suspect – from before he was even a tangible thing and repeating so many times. His armor design is from a test that had been rejected for stormtrooper use. And how many other intergalactic mercenaries had to…

August 25, 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of one of the most legendary games of all time, GoldenEye 007 on Nintendo 64. To celebrate, original developer Rare finally gets the chance to bring this classic back. An earlier Xbox port was shelved in 2008 due to rights issues, and a weird 2010 remake with Daniel…

Woo! Andy Warhol. Am I right? For years he repeated subjects and methods, putting out so much work that lots of people inside and outside the art world took pot shots like, “I (my kid, anyone, ….) could make that.” And “It’s just a poster.” And “Why would anyone want a picture of soup?” And…

A convent’s surprise inheritance includes one of the most valuable baseball cards of all time and gives it its name – The Nun’s Honus.

Steve Jobs has become known as a modern day visionary — responsible for shaping the world around us as much as any technologist or designer in recent memory. His personality and wardrobe are a part of cultural history.  With so much of Apple’s story tied into the lore of Jobs, it may come as a…

Hey there! This content appeared first in our newsletter, Shiny Things. If you want more stuff like this sent straight to you each weekend, sign up can be done HERE. We’d love to have you! Calling the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan show a seminal moment in music history would be like saying the…

The Retconning of Middle-earth J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is one of the richest worlds in all of fiction. While it seems standard now to build up a lore bible around core stories, this was revolutionary in Tolkien’s time. Before writing a word of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, he first tackled the history…