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It can spin and roll, leap and twirl. You can stretch it between your hands or swing it between your legs. The tricks you can do with one are nearly endless. No wonder the yo-yo is one of the most successful toys ever made! And its popularity began with a Filipino immigrant.
Pedro Flores was born in the Philippines in 1896, when Spain still ruled his country. After the US took over, Pedro traveled to California, received an education, and looked for ways to go into business for himself. Then he remembered a toy from his childhood called the yo-yo, which means “come back” in Tagalog. With a couple of blocks of wood and a little string, Pedro created his first model yo-yo and practiced tricks to show it off.
It was an instant hit! When children saw the yo-yo in action, they clamored to get one themselves. So Pedro always performed his tricks near movie theaters, outside candy shops – anywhere he knew children would see the toy. Soon he was hiring fellow Filipinos to advertise it for him, while he ran factories that manufactured more than a million yo-yos a week!
Pedro’s Yo-Yos is the lively story of one immigrant’s ups and downs as an entrepreneur and his determination to create a toy that would capture the imagination of children and adults all over the world.
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Meet the Creators
Rob Peñas is a second-generation Filipino-American whose parents immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. He grew up in a house filled with books and playing 16-inch softball. Rob was inspired to write this book when he learned that the ever-popular yo-yo toy was credited to a Filipino. It was important to Rob that Pedro’s story and achievement not be left in obscurity. He lives with his family in Kansas, where the prairie is not too far away.
Author’s Note and Backmatter from Pedro’s Yo-Yos: “I was originally inspired to write this book when I learned that the ever-popular yo-yo toy was credited to a Filipino. Like many historical figures, Pedro did not leave behind an extensive written record of his life, and there was a great deal of missing and conflicting information—even in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, which holds the archives of the Duncan Toys Company. Eventually, however, author and yo-yo expert Jonathan Auxier put me in touch with Kevin Walters, Pedro’s grandson, who shared his memories of his grandfather, as well as his journal. The facts surrounding the life of Pedro Flores and his creation of the yo-yo presented in this book were largely based on those hours of interviews with Kevin, and I thank him for his help and participation.”
Carl Angel is an artist, illustrator, and graphic designer whose work has been exhibited throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawai’i. A Filipino American who grew up in Honolulu, Carl lives in San Leandro, California. He is the illustrator of several books.
Glimpse into the Book
All About
Pedro Flores
Born April 1896 in the Philippines
Died December 1963 in Coshocton, Ohio
Flores left the Philippines at age 19 to study at the High School of Commerce in San Francisco, then pursued a degree at Hastings College of Law.
After dropping out of Hastings College, he relocated to Santa Barbara for casual work.
An American toy consisting of a ball and rubber band caught his eye and reminded him of the bandalore, a wood-and-string toy he played with as a child in the Philippines.
Flores combined features of both toys, creating the modern-day yo-yo.
Flores never claimed to have invented the yo-yo and always pointed out its ancient Philippine lineage. However, he deserves credit for the yo-yo’s first widespread use in the United States, including popularizing the name and initially mass producing and marketing the delightful flying toy.
Flores patented his innovation and began producing the yo-yos himself, founding the Yo-yo Manufacturing Company in 1928. Despite the Depression, Flores sold the company to Duncan Toy Company in 1932 and began to tour the United States promoting yo-yo play and competitions. Duncan continued to manufacture the yo-yo while Flores promoted it through teaching and demonstrations.
Yo-yo enthusiasts around the globe still play and train for competitions made popular by Flores.
A yo-yo was taken into space by the Challenger in 1985.
The Strong inducted the yo-yo into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.
National Yo-Yo Day is June 6.
Background Information
The Philippines: The Philippines is a nation that today consists of more than 7,000 islands in the western Pacific, occupied by 109 million people. A loose group of tribes lived among the Philippine islands when explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in 1521. Magellan claimed the islands for Spain, and subsequent Spanish colonizers brought the Catholic religion and other European customs to the Filipinos. Spain ruled the Philippines for more than three hundred years, until 1898, when the United States purchased the islands from Spain. Filipinos who had rebelled against Spain felt betrayed and continued their fight in a war lasting years. Because the United States had also fought for independence, opinion was divided on taking another people’s freedom away. After much debate, the government promised to give Filipinos their freedom back.
All About the Yo-Yo
Duncan Yo-Yo Patent Sketch
The Yo-Yo: The toy we now know as the yo-yo originated in China thousands of years ago. Then called the bandalore, it traveled west over the centuries to Europe, where it was considered an amusement for adults and the upper class. It appeared in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century but failed to achieve widespread acceptance. The bandalore also spread throughout Asia and the Philippines, where it became highly popular by the late nineteenth century, when Pedro Flores was born. The first printed reference to the term “yo-yo” in the West was in Scientific American magazine, which published an article on “Filipino Toys” in a July 1916 issue.
The Science of Yo-Yos
A yo-yo starts off in your hand with only potential energy. Once it's spinning and moving, rising and falling, it has a mixture of potential energy and two kinds of kinetic energy. You have to keep adding more energy by jerking the string.
Yo-Yo Tutorial Videos
2023 National Yo-Yo Contest Winner
Yo-Yo Facts
Syria banned the yo-yo in 1933 because they believed the toy was responsible for a severe drought.
In 1999, the National Toy Hall of Fame elected the Duncan Yo-Yo into its halls at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
The largest yo-yo in the world weighs 4,620 pounds and was created by Beth Johnson. She demonstrated her yo-yo in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 15, 2012.
In 2020, Michael Francis from Kitchener, Ontario broke the world record by spinning 19 yo-yos simultaneously. The previous record was 16.
The National Yo-Yo Museum is located in Chico, California.
We often use the term yo-yoing to describe a person fluctuating between two difficult decisions.
Collectors spend hundreds of dollars on rare, vintage, and retro yo-yos.
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