The Great Inventors – Donald Duncan

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Although DF Duncan Senior, born in 1892, was a talented inventor (he co-patented a four-wheel hydraulic car brake and came up with the Eskimo pie), his real genius was marketing. He was, for example, the brains behind the first premium incentive('send in two cereal packet lids and we’ll send you a free x, y or z'), and largely responsible for the inexorable spread of the parking meter.

The product most closely associated with Duncan, however was already several thousand years old when he adopted it. The yo-yo had been a favourite toy of the Ancient Greeks, and the Filipinos had been using spiked versions for hunting and fighting for hundreds of years (they had 20-foot strings). Indeed, the word 'yo-yo' comes to us from Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines. But they were completely unfamiliar to Americans when Pedro Flores, a Filipino immigrant, started manufacturing them in California during the 1920s.

When Duncan saw the toy, he sprang into action. In 1929, he bought the rights from Flores for $25,000, trademarked the name Yo-Yo and improved the design, introducing a sliding loop round the axle instead of a knot. Then teams of salesmen were dispatched around the country to seduce the public with demonstrations of tricks like 'walking the dog' and 'around the world'.

Duncan also struck a deal with William Randolph Hearst to get free advertising. In return, he organised a series of yo-yo competitions in which subscription to Hearst's newspapers was an entry requirement.

The campaign was phenomenally successful. Duncan’s factory in Luck, Wisconsin was soon churning out 3,600 yo-yos every hour. In one month in 1931, three million of the toys were sold just in Philadelphia. Sales peaked at 45 million units in 1962, but paradoxically, this was the point at which production and advertising costs spiralled out of control. Duncan was forced to sell, and the Flambeau Plastic Co acquired the company name and trademarks.

Duncan died in 1971. Had he lived for 21 more years, he would seen the ancient toy he had re-popularised launched into space aboard the Shuttle Atlantis.

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