The Strong Museum in Rochester is the only museum in the world devoted entirely to the history of play. Its collection includes over 500,000 objects—toys, dolls, board games, video games, and other artifacts of play and imagination—and the permanent and rotating exhibits are designed to be interactive rather than hands-off. The National Toy Hall of Fame, housed within the Strong, inducts new toys annually in a widely covered ceremony. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games maintains one of the most important archives of video game history in existence.

The museum is enormous—over 285,000 square feet—and genuinely engaging for both children and adults, though the primary audience skews young. Exhibits include a full-scale indoor butterfly garden, a retro arcade, a Sesame Street-themed area, and rotating displays that have covered everything from Barbie to pinball to the history of board gaming. For families visiting the Finger Lakes, the Strong is a rainy-day (or any-day) destination worth the drive to Rochester. Adults without children will find the historical collections and the electronic games archive surprisingly compelling.