40 Fun Facts About Yo-Yos

Which Middle Eastern country banned yo-yos in 1933 after locals blamed the toy for a drought?

Syria outlawed the toy only five years after Pedro Flores opened his Yo-yo Manufacturing Company in California in 1928.

Country star Roy Acuff taught which US president to yo-yo on stage at the new Grand Ole Opry House?

Richard Nixon got his lesson on the Opry's first night at Opryland in March 1974, and Acuff then coaxed him into playing several songs on the piano.

Which James Bond film features a deadly yo-yo whose disks are large circular saw blades?

Octopussy put the saw-bladed toy on screen in 1983, yet there is no sound historical evidence that yo-yos were ever used as real weapons.

In which classic yo-yo trick is the spinning toy lowered to roll along the floor?

Walk the dog begins with a hard throw that leaves the yo-yo spinning at the end of its string, so it trundles forward the moment it touches the ground.

The word yo-yo probably comes from which country, the birthplace of toymaker Pedro Flores?

Philippines-born Flores started with a dozen handmade toys in California in 1928 and never claimed to have invented the yo-yo.

A painted cup from around 440 BC shows a boy playing with a yo-yo in which ancient civilization?

Greece left the earliest firm record of the toy, in a land where children coming of age traditionally gave up their playthings as offerings to the gods.

Big-Yo, a working wooden yo-yo weighing 256 pounds, needs which machine to send it up and down?

A crane and a skilled operator work Big-Yo, a scaled-up copy of Tom Kuhn's No-Jive yo-yo that earned a place in the 1982 Guinness Book of World Records.

Which Paris-protecting heroine of the animated series Miraculous wields a yo-yo as her weapon?

Ladybug is the alter ego of schoolgirl Marinette, who was so unthrilled about becoming a superheroine that her first transformation happened by mistake.

Tom Kuhn, who patented the first take-apart yo-yo, worked in which day job?

Dentist Tom Kuhn, nicknamed Dr. Yo, took patent advice from a lawyer who was one of his own patients and showed off his yo-yo collection in his office lobby.

Besides yo-yos, toy tycoon Donald F. Duncan founded a company making which street equipment?

Parking meters were a Duncan sideline, and he is also credited with the premium incentive, in which shoppers collect proofs of purchase to trade for rewards.

Which basic yo-yo throw, the basis of most tricks, leaves the toy spinning at the string's end?

Sleeper throws need a hard snap of the wrist, and a cheap fixed-axle yo-yo will then spin for 10 to 20 seconds before a tug brings it home.

Which family group took the Joe South song 'Yo-Yo' to number three on the Billboard Hot 100?

The Osmonds scored the hit in 1971 with a cover version: Billy Joe Royal's original had stalled at number 117 five years earlier.

Which comedian created the mostly silent stage character 'Yo-Yo Man' and registered the name?

Tommy Smothers dreamed up the character in the late 1960s, and his 1988 Yo Yo Man Instructional Video went on to sell over 200,000 copies.

In The Simpsons, a yo-yo accident lands Bart in detention, where he finds whose personal ad?

Edna Krabappel had placed the ad out of loneliness, and Bart, punished for smashing the class aquarium with his yo-yo, answers it as a prank in 'Bart the Lover'.

Harvey Lowe won the first World Yo-Yo Contest in 1932 in which European capital?

London's Empire Theatre staged the contest, won by a Canadian schoolboy who stayed in Europe until 1934 and befriended Laurel and Hardy.

Which flared yo-yo shape, named after an insect, makes the toy easier to catch on its string?

Butterfly yo-yos flare outward to give the string a wide target, and many modern ones respond so weakly that a plain tug will not bring them back.

In English football, what does a team nicknamed a 'yo-yo club' do again and again?

A side that is promoted then relegated over and over is a yo-yo club, while German fans call such a team a 'lift team' instead.

In England at the end of the 18th century, the fashionable yo-yo was commonly known by which name?

Bandalore, sometimes spelled bandylore, was the usual English word, and a 1791 illustration shows a woman playing with one.

Pedro Flores held which hotel job when his lunch-break yo-yo play first drew attention in the 1920s?

Bellhop Flores got the idea after reading about a man who had become a millionaire by selling a ball attached to a rubber band.

Pedro Flores's yo-yos could spin in place because the string met the axle with what instead of a knot?

A loop of twisted string lets the axle turn freely inside it, whereas a yo-yo tied on tightly can only run straight down and back up.

Which newspaper baron's papers publicised Duncan's early yo-yo contests as a way to win new readers?

William Randolph Hearst gave the contests publicity on one condition: every entrant had to sell subscriptions to his newspapers.

Why did Duncan lose its exclusive trademark on the word yo-yo in a 1965 federal court ruling?

It was common speech by then, the appeals court decided, and the cost of the fight helped push the Duncan family to sell the company name in 1968.

The popular tale that yo-yos were once used as weapons is believed to have started as what?

A marketing gimmick is the likely origin: Duncan's travelling demonstrators spread the weapon story in the company's early years.

Which component, fitted to yo-yo axles from around 1990, lets modern models spin for minutes?

Ball bearing yo-yos took off with Tom Kuhn's SB-2 of 1990, although the bearing maker SKF had sold novelty versions as early as 1984.

Which juggling prop, spun on a string between two hand sticks, developed from the Chinese yo-yo?

Diabolo in its modern form was developed in the early twentieth century by Belgian engineer Gustave Philippart, who is usually credited with the name.

Which Super Smash Bros. fighter, the hero of EarthBound, attacks with a yo-yo and a baseball bat?

Ness also fights with psychic powers, and he became a fan favourite through Smash Bros. even though EarthBound sold poorly in the United States.

Engineers use a 'yo-yo de-spin', a pair of unwinding cables, to slow the spin of which machines?

Satellites often leave their rockets spinning fast, so the cables fling out end masses to soak it up: NASA's Dawn probe dropped from 46 rpm to 3 this way.

A painting from around 1770, known as 'Lady with a Yo-yo', was made in which country?

India produced the watercolour, in Rajasthan, though the string toy it shows is similar rather than identical to the modern yo-yo.

In freehand yo-yo play, invented by Steve Brown in 1999, the string's free end is tied to what?

A counterweight takes the place of the player's finger, so it can be tossed from hand to hand or bounced off the body, and Duncan's patent on the idea ran until 2020.

Unresponsive yo-yos ignore a tug, so which move doubles the string in the gap to bring them back?

A bind jams extra string against the response system so the yo-yo grabs and winds up, a skill that opened the way to tricks using slack string.

As a thrown yo-yo unwinds, much of its straight-line kinetic energy is converted into which other form?

Rotational energy stored in the whirling disks is what carries the yo-yo back up, because the string simply rewinds in the opposite direction.

Besides bronze, surviving yo-yos from more than 2,000 years ago are made of which material?

Terracotta, or fired clay, has lasted the centuries, although the usual material for yo-yos of that time was probably wood.

Which Northern California city, hometown of world champion Gentry Stein, houses the National Yo-Yo Museum?

Chico's museum is free to visit and marks National Yo-Yo Day every June 6, the birthday of yo-yo tycoon Donald F. Duncan.

Which Wisconsin village was once home to Duncan's yo-yo factory headquarters, opened in 1946?

Luck got the Duncan factory in 1946, and the yo-yo it turned out was later honoured in the National Toy Hall of Fame.

The Duncan yo-yo is in the National Toy Hall of Fame, housed at The Strong museum in which city?

Rochester, New York, is home to The Strong, which honoured the Duncan yo-yo in 1999 and notes that Scientific American once printed directions for making one.

Duncan revived sagging yo-yo sales in 1962 with a comeback campaign built around which medium?

Television adverts answered years of declining sales after World War II, yet within three years of the campaign Duncan had lost a costly trademark fight in court.

Which Ohio city hosted the World Yo-Yo Contest in 2016, 2019 and 2024?

Cleveland took over as the American host after the contest left Orlando, Florida, where it had been held every year from 2000 to 2013.

Pedro Flores opened his first yo-yo factory in 1928 in which coastal California city?

Santa Barbara was only the start: by late 1929 Flores was also running factories in Los Angeles and Hollywood, with 600 workers in all.

Which European capital hosted the World Yo-Yo Contest in both 2014 and 2025?

Prague has welcomed the contest twice since it began moving between continents, while Budapest lost its turn when the 2020 event was cancelled.

The Eskimo yo-yo, an Alaska Native toy, swings two balls traditionally covered in which animal's skin?

Seal skin covers the two balls, which hang on cords of unequal length so that they can circle in opposite directions without colliding.