The Ups and Downs of the Yo-Yo

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According to the Smithsonian Snapshot Collection, America owes its fascination with the yo-yo mainly to Chicago businessman Donald F. Duncan Sr., who spotted it while on a business trip to San Francisco in 1928. It was being used by Pedro Flores, a Philippine immigrant who began selling a toy labeled with the name, “yo-yo,” meaning “come-come” in the native language of the Philippines.

By early 1929, Flores had secured financing, set up his own firm and manufactured more than 100,000 wooden toys and trademarked the name “yo-yo.” Flores realized that people had to be shown how to use a yo-yo before they would buy it. He hired a team of fellow yo-yo masters to demonstrate the toy’s amazing tricks.

Duncan, a marketer, entrepreneur and manufacturer of wooden novelty items and toys, immediately recognized the yo-yo’s potential as a popular new toy. He quickly raised $5,000 to purchase initial rights to the yo-yo from Flores and founded Donald F. Duncan Inc. By October 1932, he had secured Flores’s remaining assets, including the all-important trademark. Until the trademark expired in 1965 and competing plastic yo-yos began to outsell his old-fashioned, wooden ones, Duncan was the country’s leading yo-yo producer.

This wooden yo-yo was made by the Duncan Toys Company in the 1930s. It has a green design with a broad red stripe. The seal reads “Genuine Duncan Yo-Yo, Reg. US Pat.” This was an early version of the Duncan Genuine Yo-Yo, produced soon after Duncan bought the trademark term “yo-yo” from Flores. This yo-yo's seal is reminiscent of the one used by Flores.

In the simplest play, the string is intended to be wound on the spool by hand; the yo-yo is then thrown downwards so that it first descends unwinding the string, then climbs back winding it up; and finally the yo-yo is grabbed, ready to be thrown again and again. Many other trick plays exist, most based on the basic sleeper trick. One of the most famous tricks on the yoyo is "walk the dog". This is done by throwing a strong sleeper and allowing the yoyo to roll across the floor.

The earliest surviving yo-yo dates to 500 BC and was made using terra cotta skin disks. A Greek vase painting from this period shows a boy playing yo-yo (see right). Greek records from the period describe toys made out of wood, metal, or painted terra cotta (fired clay). The terra cotta disks were used to ceremonially offer the toys of youth to certain gods when a child came of age—discs of other materials were used for actual play.

Philippine historical records indicate that 16th-century hunters hiding in trees used a rock tied to a cord up to 20 feet in length to throw at wild animals beneath them—the cord enabling retrieval of the rock after missed attempts.

Many other sources including Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things say that "yo-yo" was a Tagalog word supposedly meaning "come-come" or "return."  It is asserted that the yo-yo was a weapon in the Philippines. Lucky Meisenheimer, author of Lucky's Collectors Guide to 20th Century Yo-Yos - History and Values, characterizes this as popular but fabricated. The allegation was nevertheless used in a Diet Mountain Dew ad from 2008 as part of the drink's "Surprising Facts" ad campaign.

In the Filipino design, one continuous piece of string, double the desired length, is twisted around itself to produce a loop at one end which is fitted around the axle. Also termed a looped slip-string, this seemingly minor modification allows for a far greater variety and sophistication of motion, thanks to increased stability and suspension of movement during free spin.

The principal distinction between the Filipino design and more primitive yo-yos is in the way the yo-yo is strung. In older (and some remaining inexpensive) yo-yo designs, the string is tied to the axle using a knot. With this technique, the yo-yo just goes back-and-forth; it returns easily, but it is impossible to make it sleep.

Surprisingly, this innovation in the string design is useful even for off-string yo-yo play, in which the yo-yo is not attached to the string at all. The looped winding ensures that the free end of the string has no bulges, splices, or other deformities, which can cause the string to jam uncontrollably in off-string play.

James L. Haven and Charles Hettrick of Cincinnati, Ohio, received the first United States patent on "...an improved construction of the toy, commonly called a bandelore..." in 1866.

In 1946, the Duncan Toys Company opened a yo-yo factory in Luck, Wisconsin, prompting the town to dub itself 'Yo-yo Capital of the World'.

Declining sales after the Second World War prompted Duncan to launch a comeback campaign for his trademarked "Yo-Yo" in 1962 with a series of television advertisements. The media blitz was met with unprecedented success; thanks in great part to the introduction of the Duncan Butterfly, the yo-yo was more accessible to the beginner than ever.

This success would be short-lived, however, and in a landmark trademark case in 1965, a federal court's appeals ruled in favor of the Royal Tops Company, determining that yo-yo had become a part of common speech and that Duncan no longer had exclusive rights to the term. As a result of the expenses incurred by this legal battle as well as other financial pressures, the Duncan family sold the company name and associated trademarks in 1968 to Flambeau, Inc, who had manufactured Duncan's plastic models since 1955. As of 2011, Flambeau Plastics continues to run the company.

The 1970s and 1980s saw a number of innovations in yo-yo technology, primarily dealing with the connection between the string and the axle. In 1978, dentist and yo-yo celebrity Tom Kuhn patented the “No Jive 3-in-1” yo-yo, creating the world's first "take-apart" yo-yo, which enabled yo-yo players to change the axle.

In 1980, Michael Caffrey patented what would later become the Yomega Brain, a yo-yo with a centrifugal clutch transaxle. Designed with a free-spinning plastic sleeve linkage, "The Brain" could spin much longer than previous fixed-axle designs. In addition, the axle was "clutched" with spring-loaded weights which would pull away from the axle at higher speeds and grab again at lower speeds. The result is an automatic return of the yo-yo when speed drops below a given threshold.

Swedish bearing company SKF briefly manufactured novelty yo-yos with ball bearings in 1984.

In all transaxle yo-yos, ball bearings significantly reduce friction when the yo-yo is spinning, enabling longer and more complex tricks. Subsequent yo-yoers used this ability to their advantage, creating new tricks that had not been possible with fixed-axle designs.

The 1990s saw a resurgence of the popularity of the yo-yo and yo-yo culture.

Continued development of yo-yo technology is evident in the widespread sale of the Yomega Brain, based on Michael Caffrey's design, and the Playmaxx Pro-yo, a take-apart fixed axle yo-yo.

In 1990, Tom Kuhn released the SB-2 yo-yo (short for Silver Bullet 2), a high-performance ball bearing transaxle made with aluminum. This marked a major breakthrough for the modern yo-yo, as it was the first ball bearing yo-yo that actually worked. This ensured extremely long spin times and the ability to return as well. This yo-yo, (along with his many other accomplishments in the yo-yo world), eventually brought him the title "Father of the modern yo-yo," receiving the "Donald F. Duncan Family Award for Industry Excellence" in 1998. He was the first to receive this award.

In the late 1990s, Yomega partnered with HPK Marketing and helped fuel the yo-yo boom that spread across the globe. From this partnership, Team High Performance was born, a group of skilled demonstrators that toured the world. In this period, Yomegas were heavily marketed in Japan, where Bandai produced several yo-yos under the Yomega name which were sometimes different from those sold in the US.

At the turn of the century, 1999–2000, Yomega partnered with McDonald's and distributed a large number of Yomega X-Brain and Firestorm yo-yos at outlets throughout the US.

Another development around this time included the use of different materials such as billet machined Aluminum as seen in the ‘Dif-e-Yo’ Range.

Many yo-yo enthusiasts are members of the online yo-yo community. Using social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and yo-yo store forums, players discuss news topics, trade tricks, and trade yo-yo collectibles. The most popular forums are attached to yo-yo stores such as YoYoNation.com, YoYoExpert.com, and YoYoGuy.com. Many yo-yo manufactures also have their own blogs or forums such as YoYoFactory.com, OneDropDesigns.com, Yo-Yo.com and Yomega.com. Recently there has also been a rise of personal news and review blogs on the subject of yo-yos. A popular yo-yo culture website is YoYoSkills.com, a personal blog dedicated to collecting and publishing news pertinent to the yo-yo community.

Check out your local library for more information on the yo-yo.