Traditional Kids’ Games series (5) – YO-YOs
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| Mr Yodel Handpainted Yo-Yo Strings packaging design(cropped) Image Source |
Yo-Yo: Who invented it?
Info Source
History
Duncan was not the inventor of the yoyo; they have been around for over twenty-five hundred years. In fact the yoyo or yo-yo is considered the second oldest toy in history, the oldest being the doll. In ancient Greece, the toy was made of wood, metal and terra cotta. The Greeks decorated the two halves of the yoyo with pictures of their gods. As a right of passage into adulthood Greek children often gave up their toys and placed them on the family alter to pay homage.
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| “Gold Seal” Donald Duncan’s first YOYO Photo Source |
Around 1800, the yoyo moved into Europe from the Orient. The British called the yoyo the bandalore, quiz or the Prince of Wales toy. The French used the name incroyable or l’emigrette. However, it is a Tagalog word, the native language of the Philippines, and means “come back”. In the Philippines, the yoyo was used as a weapon for over 400 hundred years. Their version was large with sharp edges and studs and attached to thick twenty-foot ropes for flinging at enemies or prey.
Pedro Flores
People in the United States started playing with the British bandalore or yoyo in the 1860s. It was not until the 1920s that Americans first heard the word yoyo. Pedro Flores, a Philippine immigrant, began manufacturing a toy labeled with that name. Flores became the first person to mass-produce toy yoyos, at his small toy factory located in California.
Donald Duncan
- Donald Duncan also worked out a deal with the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst to get free advertising in Hearst’s newspapers. In exchange, Duncan held competitions and the entrants were required to bring a quantity of new subscriptions for the newspaper as their entry fee.
- Duncan’s massive factory produced 3,600 of the toys every hour making the factory’s hometown of Luck, Wisconsin the YoYo Capital of the World.
- Duncan’s early media blitzes were so successful that in Philadelphia alone, three million units sold during a month-long campaign in 1931.
- Yoyo sales reached its highest peak in 1962, when Duncan Yo-Yo sold 45 million units.
- The yoyo continues today, its latest honor is being the first toy in outer space.
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| DUNCAN Yo-YO Now… Everything you need to get your professional YO-YO career started. |
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