Filipino History · Toys & Inventions
The Yo-Yo's Surprising Filipino Connection
The toy is thousands of years old, but the yo-yo that conquered America came from a young immigrant from Ilocos Norte and one clever change to its string. Here's the real story, and the myths it left behind.
Try the string that changed everything
Throw the old knotted yo-yo, then switch to Pedro Flores's slip-string and watch it "sleep."
Ready. Press Throw.
Ask people who invented the yo-yo, and many Filipinos will proudly say "a Filipino." The truth is more interesting than the legend. The yo-yo was already ancient when the first one reached the Philippines. But a young man from Vintar, Ilocos Norte, gave it the name the world now uses, built the first factory to mass-produce it, and changed its string in a way that made modern yo-yo tricks possible.
His name was Pedro Flores, and his story is as much about immigration, business and marketing as it is about a toy. This article separates the facts from the myths, explains the small engineering idea at the heart of it all, and follows the yo-yo's many ups and downs.
A toy older than you think
The yo-yo is one of the oldest toys known to history. A painted Greek drinking cup, an Attic kylix from around 440 BC now in the Antikensammlung museum in Berlin, shows a boy playing with one. Archaeologists have also found ancient disks of terracotta and bronze, though wooden versions were probably the most common and simply didn't survive.
The toy turns up again and again in later centuries and in many places. In 18th-century Europe it was known as the bandalore, and it was fashionable among adults as well as children. Similar spinning toys on strings appeared in parts of Asia too.
These early yo-yos had one thing in common: the string was tied firmly to the axle. Throw one down and it rolls straight back up. That's fun, but it limits what you can do. Keep that detail in mind, because it's where the Filipino chapter begins.
Meet Pedro Flores of Vintar
Pedro Edralin Flores was born on April 26, 1896, in Vintar, a town in Ilocos Norte in northern Luzon. Like many Ilocano young men of his generation, he left home to look for opportunity in the United States, arriving in 1915.
Pedro E. FloresIlocano · Filipino-American entrepreneur
VINTAR → U.S.A.- Born
- April 26, 1896, Vintar, Ilocos Norte
- Arrived in U.S.
- 1915
- Studied
- High School of Commerce, San Francisco; later law at UC Berkeley and Hastings College of Law (did not finish)
- Day job
- Odd jobs, including work as a bellboy in Santa Barbara, California
- Big idea
- Making and selling yo-yos with a looped slip-string (1928)
- Died
- January 3, 1964, Coshocton, Ohio
At the time, the Philippines was a United States territory, and Filipinos could travel to the U.S. mainland as "U.S. nationals." Thousands did, working on farms, in canneries, in hotels and in homes along the West Coast. Flores studied while he worked, hoping to become a lawyer, but he left school before finishing.
What he did bring with him was a childhood skill. Flores had played with the yo-yo as a boy in the Philippines, and while working in California he realized that American children had never seen the toy done his way.
The slip-string: one small change
The key to Flores's yo-yo was the string. Instead of tying it tightly to the axle, he used a loop that sits loosely around it. That one change, often called the slip-string, transforms what the toy can do.
Fig. 1 & Fig. 2 · String attachment, cross-section viewIllustration for educational purposes
Fig. 1: Knotted string
The string is tied to the axle. When the yo-yo reaches the bottom, it has to wind back up right away.
Fig. 2: Looped slip-string
The axle can spin inside the loop. The yo-yo stays at the bottom, spinning ("sleeping"), until a tug makes it climb.
When a slip-string yo-yo reaches the end of its string, it doesn't have to come back immediately. It can keep spinning in place, which players call sleeping. A gentle tug creates enough friction for the string to catch and wind the yo-yo back up. Try both versions in the yo-yo at the top of this page to feel the difference.
Sleeping is the foundation of almost every classic trick:
The SleeperThrow it down and let it spin at the bottom before calling it back.
Walk the DogLet a sleeping yo-yo roll along the floor, then pull it home.
Around the WorldSwing a spinning yo-yo in a big circle overhead.
Rock the BabyForm a "cradle" with the string and swing the sleeping yo-yo through it.
Did Flores invent the slip-string?Historians debate exactly who first looped a yo-yo string, and Flores himself never claimed to have invented the toy. What is clear is that Flores built his products and his marketing around the looped design and brought it to a mass market for the first time.
From a dozen toys to a factory
In June 1928, Flores received a business certificate in Santa Barbara for the Yo-Yo Manufacturing Company. He started small, hand-carving yo-yos for local children, then bought machinery to produce them in quantity. According to the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, by early 1929 he had secured financing, set up his own firm and turned out more than 100,000 yo-yos.
1928Yo-Yo Manufacturing Co. opens in Santa Barbara
100,000+yo-yos produced by early 1929
1930"Flores Yo-Yo" trademark registered
Flores understood something important: people had to see the yo-yo in action before they wanted one. A wooden disk on a string looks dull on a shelf. In skilled hands, it looks like magic. So he hired a team of fellow Filipino yo-yo experts to demonstrate tricks in public, and he organized neighborhood contests with prizes for different skill levels. Expansion followed, with operations in Los Angeles and Hollywood.
He didn't just sell a toy. He sold the show.
That combination of live demonstrations and competitions became the standard way to market yo-yos in America for decades.
Enter Donald F. Duncan
Chicago businessman Donald F. Duncan Sr. saw Flores's yo-yo in 1928 and recognized its potential. The Smithsonian account says Duncan quickly raised $5,000, bought initial rights to the yo-yo from Flores, and founded his own company. By October 1932, Duncan had acquired Flores's remaining business assets, including the trademark.
Reports of how much Flores earned from the sale vary widely. Some sources say more than $250,000, while others cite figures above $750,000. Either way, it was a large sum during the Great Depression. Flores stayed involved for a time, helping Duncan run promotions and contests in the early 1930s.
Duncan scaled up the playbook: traveling demonstrators, sponsored contests and newspaper promotions. "Duncan" and "yo-yo" soon became almost the same word in America, and Flores's role faded from popular memory for many years.
The name fightDuncan held "Yo-Yo" as a trademark for decades. In 1965, a U.S. federal appeals court sided with a rival, Royal Tops, finding that "yo-yo" had become an everyday word that anyone could use. Today it is a generic term in the United States, like "aspirin" or "escalator."
Where the word "yo-yo" comes from
Before Flores, English speakers usually called the toy a bandalore. The name "yo-yo" arrived with him. He knew the word from his childhood in the Philippines, and his company put it on every package.
Merriam-Webster says the word probably comes from Ilocano, the language of Flores's home province, with related words in other Philippine languages. You will often read that "yo-yo" means "come back" or "come-come" in a Philippine language. That translation is widely repeated, but it is hard to confirm, so it is best treated with some caution.
What is certain is that a Filipino word, carried across the Pacific by an Ilocano immigrant, is now understood in almost every language on Earth. It has even become a verb ("prices yo-yoed") and an everyday image for anything that keeps going up and down.
Myths vs. facts
The yo-yo's Filipino story is so appealing that it has picked up some exaggerations along the way. Tap each card to check the claim.
A century of ups and downs
True to its nature, the yo-yo's popularity has risen and fallen many times since Flores's first factory.
1928UP
Flores opens the Yo-Yo Manufacturing Company in Santa Barbara.
1929–1932UP
Duncan buys initial rights, then Flores's remaining assets and trademark by October 1932.
1946UP
Duncan opens a factory in Luck, Wisconsin, for mass production.
1962UP
Duncan launches a comeback with television advertising.
1965DOWN
A federal appeals court rules "yo-yo" is a generic word. Duncan loses exclusive use of the name.
1968DOWN
The Duncan family sells the brand name and trademarks to Flambeau, Inc.
1985UP
Astronaut David Griggs demonstrates a yo-yo in weightlessness aboard Space Shuttle Discovery (UPI report).
1990sUP
Ball-bearing axles let yo-yos sleep far longer, fueling a worldwide craze in the late 1990s.
Flores's later life and legacy
Flores didn't walk away from yo-yos after the Duncan deal. He later helped start other yo-yo ventures, including a company in Chico, California, in the 1950s, and he kept teaching the toy to children. He eventually settled in Coshocton, Ohio, where he died on January 3, 1964, at the age of 67. Some later articles give his death as December 1963, but his obituary and grave record list January 1964.
He is often called the "father of the modern yo-yo." That title fits better than "inventor." He never claimed to have created the toy, and he openly pointed to its roots in the Philippines. His real achievements were turning a folk toy into a mass-market product, popularizing the slip-string that made trick play possible, and creating the demonstration-and-contest model that sold yo-yos for generations.
Why the story matters
Pedro Flores's story is one of the best-known success stories of the early Filipino-American community, at a time when Filipino workers often faced discrimination and hard labor. A bellboy with an unfinished law degree saw value in something from his own childhood, built a business around it, and changed a global industry.
For Filipinos today, the yo-yo is a reminder that cultural knowledge, even something as ordinary as a children's game, can travel far and become part of the whole world's shared culture. The accurate version of the story is impressive enough. There's no need to exaggerate it.
Frequently asked questions
Did a Filipino invent the yo-yo?
No. The yo-yo is ancient and appears in Greek art from around 440 BC. Pedro Flores popularized it in the United States from 1928, mass-produced it and used the looped slip-string that made modern tricks possible. He never claimed to have invented it.
Where does the word "yo-yo" come from?
Merriam-Webster says it probably comes from Ilocano, a language of northern Luzon. Flores, who was from Ilocos Norte, popularized the name in the United States.
Was the yo-yo a Filipino hunting weapon?
There is no reliable historical evidence for this popular claim, so it is best treated as a myth.
What is a slip-string yo-yo?
Instead of being tied tightly to the axle, the string forms a loop around it. This lets the yo-yo spin at the bottom of the string, called sleeping, which makes tricks like Walk the Dog and Around the World possible.
Where was Pedro Flores from?
He was born on April 26, 1896, in Vintar, Ilocos Norte, and moved to the United States in 1915.
Sources & further reading
- Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, "Yo-Yo Ups and Downs".
- Merriam-Webster, "yo-yo" (etymology).
- FlipScience, "Did a Filipino invent the yo-yo?"
- UPI Archives, "Toys in space" (April 1985).
- Find a Grave, Pedro Edralin Flores (1896–1964), with obituary details.
- Wikipedia, "Pedro Flores (inventor)" and "Yo-yo", overviews with further references.
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