Yo-Yo Toy Guru Pedro Flores

Dear Melba,

 Very interesting.  I love
playing the Yo-Yo.  I bought a Yo-Yo made of wood not plastic in
Mexico 15 years ago.   I play with it occasionally and practice some
Yo-Yo tricks.  Hi to YOYOs, MSN group members.

 budz,

interested?

Melba

Pedro Flores

The Flores yo-yo was the first yo-yo manufactured in the United
States, its originator was Pedro Flores. Pedro Flores is considered the
original yo-yo guru. Mr. Flores was the singular most important person in
introducing the word "yo-yo" to the United States. Although the yo-yo as a toy
(known as a bandalore) has been used for centuries, even existing in the
United States for years prior to Mr. Flores, as one astute observer noted in
the late 1920’s "we’ve all done the yo-yo before but we never had a name for
it."

Pedro
Flores was a native of Vintar, Ilocos Norte, Philippines. He
came to the United State in 1915. He attended the High School of Commerce in
San Francisco 1919-1920 then he took up the study of Law at the University of
California Berkeley and the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.

Flores dropped out of school for reasons
unknown and moved to Santa Barbara, California. He worked at odd jobs for
years and at the time of starting his yo-yo business he was working as a
bellboy.

He
developed his vision for the yo-yo’s potential when he read about a man
selling a ball attached to a rubber band who made a million dollars. He
remembered the game yo-yo, which was played for hundreds of years in the
Philippines, and he thought it had a good market possibility in the U.S. Mr.
Flores was quoted saying "I do not expect to make a million dollars, I just
want to be working for myself. I have been working for other people for
practically all my life and I don’t like it."

In early
1928 Flores came to Los Angeles and asked some wealthy
Philippine for assistance in manufacturing yo-yos. His friends thought him
crazy and he returned to Santa Barbara with only his dream. Being a true
entrepreneur, at the age of 29, on June 9^th 1928, he applied and
received a certificate of conducting business for the Yo-yo Manufacturing
Company in Santa Barbara. On June 23, 1928 he made 1 dozen yo-yos by hand and
began selling them to neighborhood children. By November of 1928 his company
had 2000 yo-yos and he was able to attract two American financiers, James and
Daniel Stone of Los Angeles. Now with the ability to produce machine made
yo-yos, four months later, over 100,000 yo-yos had been produced. By November
of 1929 three factories were making 300,000 yo-yos daily and employing 600
workers. These companies were the Flores and Stone, Los Angeles; The Flores
Yo-yo Corporation, Hollywood; and the Yo-yo Manufacturing Company, Santa
Barbara.

Flores also inaugurated the yo-yo
spinning contest which spread the first yo-yo frenzy in the United States in
late 1928 and 1929. The yo-yo was promoted as the Flores Yo-yo "The Wonder
Toy" and using a phrase which now familiar with a slight variation "If it
isn’t Flores it isn’t a yo-yo" as the slogan. Although early contests resulted
in the spread of the yo-yo fad they were clearly different than the more
modern contests. In the initial contests endurance was the main event. The
winner was the individual who could keep his or her yo-yo spinning up and down
without missing, for the longest duration. Many contests resulted in ties
after hours of continuous yo-yoing by stubborn competitors refusing to quit.
Frequently, the champion of these endurance events was determined by drawing
straws. Other contest categories included the yo-yo thrown farthest with
complete return and the largest number of perfect spins in a five minute
period. Prizes were also for hand made yo-yos, and yo-yos made out of bicycle
wheels and wood barrel tops were not uncommon submissions. Early contests
could be found anywhere but on November 22, 1929 the Gates Theater in
Portsmouth, Virginia, became the first theater to offer a contest. For the
rest of the 20’s and 30’s theaters became popular sites for contests. Although
some Flores yo-yo strings were made out of silk which allowed for less sleep
action than later cotton strings. Several different designs of the Flores
yo-yo were done. Prices in 1929 ranged from 15 cents to $1.50 each depending
on the design and decoration. Flores employed Dorothy Carter as his chief
designer of his yo-yos.

Although
Pedro Flores was frequently described as the inventor of the yo-yo, Mr. Flores
never personally claimed to have invented the yo-yo, and he always mentioned
it’s past history as a centuries old Philippine game. He was also frequently
described as the patent holder of the yo-yo, but yo-yos (Bandalores) prior to
Pedro Flores had already been patented. Even though patent applied for and
patent pending are often seen on Flores yo-yos this was a
technique used to dissuade other toy companies from producing yo-yos. There
was no legal patent held for the standard yo-yo by Pedro Flores. He did apply
for and receive a trademark for the Flores Yo-yo and this was registered on
July 22, 1930. It was shortly after this that Flores sold his interest in the
yo-yo factories which were later acquired by the Donald Duncan Yo-yo
Company.

At the
end of 1929 a true yo-yo craze was going on across the country initially
inspired by Flores but new competitors had entered the arena
including Don Duncan, Lewis Marx and others. Although Duncan’s name is most
associated with the popularity of the yo-yo contests, the original yo-yo fire
was fueled by Pedro Flores. It is uncertain exactly at what date Duncan Yo-yo
Company acquired the Flores Yo-Yo name (probably 1930) but it did have the
Flores trade mark legally assigned to it in 1932. For a period of time in the
early 1930’s Duncan corporation not only sold Duncan Yo-yos but they also sold
Flores Yo-yos as well. In very early contests in 1931 either a genuine Flores
yo-yo or a genuine Duncan Gold Seal Yo-yo could be used in the
competitions.

Pedro
Flores was reported to have sold his interest in his yo-yo manufacturing
companies for greater than one quarter of a million dollars, which during the
depression was a fortune. Mr. Flores was quoted saying "I am more interested
in teaching children to use the yo-yos than I am in manufacturing of yo-yos." Flores followed through by becoming one of the key promoters in
Duncan’s early yo-yo campaigns. Especially during 1931-32, Mr. Flores was
instrumental in setting up many of the promotions in the cities where the
early Duncan contests were being held. The contest’s were vastly changed from
the initial contests ran by Flores just two years previously. These contests
now required a series of tricks similar to modern day contests with ties being
broken by the number of loop the loops completed.

Flores stayed involved with yo-yos most
of his life and even after W.W. II he helped Joe Radovan in the establishment
of the Chico Yo-yo Company. He also started the Flores Corp. of America in
1954 which briefly produced yo-yo in the 1950’s. Although Flores has less name
recognition in the general public compared to other yo-yo manufacturing
companies it was Flores who introduced the yo-yo craze to America

- Excepts from "Lucky’s Guide to YoYo collecting"
by: Lucky Meisenheimer, MD

-  http://www.nationalyoyo.org/main/Pedro_Floreshtm

Published 11/12/04   ALT  MSN Group
Web Page: Yo-Yo Toy Guru