Thanks for sharing your knowledge and setting the details straight. That is something that can go awry with my 20-minute whirlwind research sessions.

You’ve earned your Yo-Yo Man title, for sure.

Today, that yo-yo, with both Roy’s and Nixon’s autographs, is the most costly bandalore collectible in the world.

(sources for these last two posts: Bandalore #1, Care & Operation of the Noble Disc, and personal interviews with Don Duncan Jr)

As to why I didn’t see this earlier (and thus comment earlier) I was working on my birthday. (Anyone who wants to have so much work that they’re out of town working a show on their birthday, needs to see Ryan’s friend Dean at a website which Ryan created.)

Don Duncan Sr had more to do with the success (One might call it a cultural fire during the 1930s!) of the yo-yo. When he bought the company from Pedro (renaming it Duncan) he pushed forth the same method by which he’d made Good Humor a success: The Yo-Yo Man Comes to Your Neighborhood. This was before TV, and he set up swell deals with Hearst papers to publicize the Duncan tournaments and yo-yo men. During a Depression when almost nobody had a nickel, almost every kid (and lots of grown-ups) paid a quarter for the Duncan Super Tournament (called, IIRC, a 77 at the time).

But it wasn’t common usage which lost the “yo-yo” trademark for Duncan. Joe Radovan, a Duncan Yo-Yo Man, broke out on his own, manufacturing the Royal “return tops” (yo-yos) from 1935 on. Royal did pretty well, and used the term “yo-yo” even though Duncan had a trademark on it.

It ended up in court, of course, and the final decision (after years & years & years) was based more on the (true) argument that the term “yo-yo” had been used for the toy in the Philippines for ages prior to Pedro Flores naming his company “the Flores Yo-Yo Company.” That put the term squarely in international “common usage” and fairly common usage among Filipino immigrants. (Say hello, Kato!) It was probably Don Duncan Jr’s mistake to take it to court in the first place, but it’s still not what crushed Don’s company.

Y’see, when Don Sr passed the company to Don Jr (when Don was still a teenager, he told me) Don started putting his Yo-Yo Men in various local programs of this newfangled television thing. Sales would erupt in those areas. So he figured it would make sense to advertise on national TV.

In 1962, Duncan sold more than 54 million yo-yos. (This number was originally misquoted at 45 million, and most stories continue this error.) That was more yo-yos than there were children in America, and Don Jr & company were going nuts trying to keep up with demand for the wooden Super Tournament Yo-Yo. The factory at Luck, Wisconsin was running 24 hours, triple overtime was being paid, and Don was paying far over market price for the hardwood maple that made these the best fixed-axle yo-yos, perhaps of all time.

But this wood needed to season for up to a year before the lumber could be turned (literally, on a lathe) into the noble disk. So Don stocked up for a full year’s worth of wood, and stepped up production to stockpile a year of yo-yos.

Now it was the nature of the Yo-Yo Men to only hit a specific area once every three years. By that time, there had been a turnover of kids ready to use a yo-yo. They never “burned out” a district.

But advertising on national TV had turned the entire nation into “a specific area.” By the next year, hardly anyone needed another yo-yo.

Can you say “hula hoop?”

With expenses having gotten way out of control, and the throw of the dice having turned against him, Don Jr put together a plan which would save everybody’s jobs and keep the place running at a lower level. All he needed was for his creditors to allow him a little time. Specific’ly, the plastics company which had manufactured his plastic yo-yos, a recent addition to the line.

Instead, Flambeau Plastics forced Don Jr into bankruptcy and pretty much took over the place.

And that’s what killed the original Duncan company, much more than the loss of the trademark.

PS: Don Jr bounced back a few years later with the ProYo, and then he & Tom hit it bigger with the Bumblebee ball-bearing yo-yos. I knew both these men, and it’s quite an exciting story.

For another time.

*jeep!
–Grandpa Chet