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Promotional YoYos Aren't A Recent Invention

Printed merchandise with a bounce...footballs, Frisbees, and even yo-yos for active families. Keep children occupied, whilst showing off brands and logos to their friends.

A yo-yo is a toy object, which is made from an axle, connected up to two discs. String is wrapped around the axle. In order to be played with, you have to hold the free end of the string and fling the object, keeping one finger in the finger slot, to avoid dropping. The force of the fling, will enable the axle to unwind and force the object to wind back up into your hand. This is called 'yo-yoing'.

The yo-yo is a famous pastime of many generations. The yo-yo however, can be used for many other tricks, not only to be thrown downwards. The 'sleeper' trick, is to throw the yo-yo but with a certain wrist action, this immobilises the yo-yo and it does not come back up to the users hand. But is stopped when reaching the end of the string. There are many other tricks 'yo-yoers' use when adapted to the objects.

The earliest yo yo was said, to be from the Philippine Islands. They were used as hunting tools, to tangle the animal in the yo-yo, immobilising the animal and making it easier to catch. Evidence of the use of the yo-yo, was from a Greek vase which, has a picture of a young boy holding a yo-yo like object. The toy arrived in France around 1791, it was used in France mainly for its stress relief purposes. Research states, Napoleon and his army were even using yo-yos to relax them before the Battle of Waterloo.

However, when the yo-yo reached England, the prince of Wales was said to thoroughly enjoy playing with it and was well known, for his whirling of his 'Bandalore', from the French word for the yo- yo. Later in 1946, a successful business man named Donald Duncan, saw the toys value. He made large companies all over the world. These companies, were said to produce 3,600 yo-yos per hour. These first models however, were made from wood. When plastic products come into light, they produced thousands of new plastic based yo-yos.

By 1962 Duncan's company, was said to be selling 45 million yo-yos, in one country and struggled to keep up with the amount of demands, for these toys. Today, there are eleven types of Duncan's yo-yo's still made. Interestingly, its said on April 12th 1985, yo-yos became part of an experiment for NASA. They took this toy to space, to find out what effect micro gravity would have on this spinning object. They found that, you had to throw the toy with more aggression, as there was no gravity to pull the yo-yo to the ground.

However, the yo-yo was said to slowly move up and down the string and it was impossible to make the yo-yo immobilised.

Brighten up logos and brands by using flashing or traditional yo-yos. Printed merchandise with a bounce, to increase your credibility.

A fascinating amount of information about the development of the yo-yo can be found following this link:  http://www.byya.co.uk/page15.htm http://www.spintastics.com/SSThistyo.html Or contact us fopr a quote for your printed promotional yo-yos!

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Total Merchandise | Editoral Team

Our editorial team is drawn from a pool of experienced promotional merchandise product team members, account managers, marketers and other contributors. With such a wide range of skills and experience, they write about many aspects of promotional merchandise, wider marketing and business matters, as well as company news updates.

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