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| Duncan The Amazing Yo-Yo - Ross Olney |
| Exhibit #2542 |
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| Type | Production |
| Date | 1980 |
| Owner | Rick Brough |
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Before instructional videos on VHS, DVD, or Blu-Ray, and long before the advent of digital video cameras and YouTube, you typically learned yo-yo tricks one of two ways: by watching a demonstrator at a yo-yo clinic or contest, or by studying a trick book. Regarding the latter, Ross Robert Olney's The Amazing Yo-Yo was one of the few trick books that explained basic and advanced tricks in both photographic form and written description. Today, the book is a classic instructional volume on yo-yo play. You can occasionally find it in used book stores with ex-public library "Discard" stamps in them. New versions are harder to find. This is the book I used to learn the yo-yo tricks Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, otherwise known as two-hand Texas Star and one-hand Texas Star. The book also described the Yo-Yolympics tricks that Duncan promoted in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The smiling gentleman on the book's cover is George Humphreys. George worked as a professional yo-yo demonstrator for Duncan from July 1979 to May 1983. He is pictured using a Duncan World Class yo-yo, while demonstrating the string trick called Butterfly or Bow Tie. The yo-yo's design was quite innovative and advanced for its time. The Duncan World Class yo-yo was released in 1979, one year before this book was published. George was pictured throughout the book's pages, demonstrating a wide variety of tricks using the yo-yo and other Duncan yo-yo models. See the young Mr. Humphreys in the Duncan 1979 product catalog!
(While this book was not published by Duncan Toys, it clearly was an endorsement for Duncan yo-yos and their National Yo-Yolympics program and contest that were running at the time and which Mr. Humphreys actively promoted for Duncan.) | |
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