Yo-Yo...

Have you ever played Disc, Quizzes, Joujou de Normandie, Tagalog, L'emigrette, Coblentz, Incroyable, Bandelore? Or more simply put, do you Yo-Yo?

I do, I’m a bit of a yo-yo monster, an addict - hence the doodle that popped out of my pen recently and reminded me of how much I like to yo-yo. It isn't meant to be me by the way, just one of those creatures that wander around my head from time to time.

I first learnt to yo-yo (a bit) at aged four – you know, up and down a couple of times followed by the inevitable spinning tangled string knotting that always seems to happen on the third yo if you aren’t very good. It wasn’t until my early teens that I learnt to do it properly and became hooked -or yo’d as we in the brotherhood term it.

I remember my first breakthrough. I was standing on the platform under the fabulous glass ceiling of Lucerne station in Switzerland. I was on a school trip and I’d swapped a small Swiss penknife for a really nicely balanced black Ja-Roo Classsic yo-yo. It was a revelation. Almost immediately I went from an almost zero yo-yo skill base to a good yo-yoer, three weeks later and I’d mastered the art of the yo-yo and could walk-the-dog, go around-the-world, flick-and-retrieve, stand-down, I could even hit-the-sky.

The term yo-yo is Filipino, and means ‘to return’ or ‘come, come’. It’s the second oldest toy in the world, next to the doll – yes a girl toy got there first. The Ancient Greek made yo-yos from painted terracotta, wood, and metal, and decorated them with images of mythological creatures. Yo-yos can be even be seen depicted on the walls of ancient Egyptian temples. Both Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington were keen yo-yoers and they were used by hunters in the Philippines for thousands of years.

The first actual evidence of yo-yo’s as a toy comes from India around the mid 1700’s when the yo-yo seems to have yo-yo’d from India to Europe and Britain. By 1789, yo-yos were becoming all the rage and the best French yo-yos, made from glass and ivory, were considered bourgeoisie which led to anybody sentenced to death being allowed to play with yo-yos on their way to the guillotine. Later the French playwright, Beaumarchais, featured a yo-yo in "The Marriage of Figaro".

The first recorded reference to the yo-yo in the US is in Ohio in 1866, but there was no return wheel – so it was more yo than yo-yo. The return wheel, which makes the toy shoot back into your hand, was developed by German immigrant, Charles Kirchof a few years later. In the early 1920’s a Filipino immigrant, Pedro Flores, moved to the California and made the yo-yo the success it is today. Pedro worked as a bellhop and carved and constructed wooden discs to play with in his spare time. One day he took one of his toys to work and soon attracted an excited crowd. Within a short time Flores launched his own company and began manufacturing yo-yos.

In 1929, a young entrepreneur named Donald Duncan discovered Flores, and bought out the company and the yo-yo name. Duncan’s also credited with the development of ice cream on a stick and the parking meter (bastard), and he developed the first-ever looped slip string, which allowed the yo-yo to rest at the bottom of the string or ‘sleep’ as in sleep-the-dog.

‘ENOUGH!’I hear you say. Yes, you’re right. Don’t read about yo-yoing, get one and learn – IT IS SUCH FUN!