Two Boomer Classics Join Toy Hall Of Fame
The Easy-Bake Oven and Lionel model trains are inducted Thursday into The National Toy Hall of Fame. The first Easy-Bake Oven showed up in stores in 1964 and Lionel trains have been chugging along for more than a century.
Pretzel vendors in New York City gave toymakers at Kenner the idea of creating a child-suitable gizmo that actually heated food in a small working oven. Kenner, now a division of Hasbro Inc., has since sold 23 million Easy-Bake Ovens and more than 140 million mixes. 
Engineer Joshua Lionel Cowen built his first electric toy train as a store-window attraction around 1900. When a customer bought the train instead of other toys it advertised, he launched the Lionel Manufacturing Co. It went on to become the world's biggest toy train maker, with sales peaking at $32.9 million in 1953. But we all know the most popular thing to play with:
The corrugated cardboard box - a universal plaything and recreational backdrop since the 1890s - was inducted into the hall last November.
