New York’s Strong National Museum of Play has inducted three new historic toys into its Toy Hall of Fame: Battleship, Trivial Pursuit and Slime. 

These three honorees defeated a lineup of nine other play heavyweights spanning timeless board games, ’90s electronics and unconventional items that took the world by storm, including Tickle Me Elmo, Catan, Furby, Star Wars lightsabers and Connect Four. 

Mattel first brought Slime to the masses in 1976, and the market has since expanded with the entry of several copycats and toycos dedicated to making new batches of the gooey-yet-satisfying gelatinous substance. What landed Slime a spot in the Hall of Fame is its versatility: It’s able to stand alone as a tactile product that can be stretched, squeezed and molded back together, but it has just as easily become a major component of toy lines for brands like Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

More than 100 million copies of the iconic board game Battleship have been sold globally since Milton Bradley published the first edition in 1967. It was inspired by early manufactured war games such as Basilinda (1890), Salvo (1931) and Broadsides (1943). Current rights holder Hasbro continues to publish new editions of the game to freshen up the experience for players—and it even produced a feature film based loosely on the game with Universal Pictures in 2012. 

Trivial Pursuit, meanwhile, has been a staple board game in the family closet for more than 40 years, reaching more than 100 million copies sold in 2023 and cementing itself as the best-selling Canadian-made board game of all time. Journalists Chris Haney and Scott Abbott published the first edition of the game in 1982, and it jumped to Selchow & Righter and Parker Brothers before landing at Hasbro in 2008. New iterations of the quiz game are published every year for families to enjoy together, featuring questions on topics like sports, pop culture, TV, films, licensed properties and more. 

The 2025 class of toy inductees will join last year’s Toy Hall of Fame winners Transformers, My Little Pony and Mattel’s Rummy-inspired card game Phase 10 in the Strong Museum’s toy exhibits.