By Lisa Hix — I have a confession: My brother and I destroyed my Easy-Bake Oven. I had the 1981 Mini-Wave model, the boxy, yellow microwave style, which was, in my 7-year-old mind, the only kind of Easy-Bake there was. One day, my 4-year-old brother had a brilliant idea—to “cook” a green plastic steak from our 1972 Mattel Tuff Stuff Play Food set. After all, we should be able to cook a steak, right? It fit into the slot perfectly, and for some reason, I didn’t try to stop him. The plastic steak, of...

Attack of the Vintage Toy Robots! Justin Pinchot on Japan’s Coolest Postwar Export

By Lisa Hix — Everyone is always looking for the next big thing. In the 1960s, it was going into space. In the '40s and '50s, the frontier was technology, with a particular focus on "What's going to make our lives easier?" For the very first time, you had cars with automatic-transmissions, automatic washing machines, and perpetually cooling refrigerators. I mean, we were coming out of an era when you scrubbed your clothes on a washboard and cooled your icebox with a big block of ice. Even the first...