Demonstration events that show how a new product works on the spot, contests and challenges that anyone can join, and audience-building in partnership with the media. Companies around the world now use these methods as a matter of course. In the 1920s, Filipino-born entrepreneur Pedro Flores combined them into a single package and created a worldwide craze. Drawing on sources including the Smithsonian Institution, this piece traces the marketing that turned the yo-yo into a sensation.
1. The yo-yo and Pedro Flores
First, a premise: the yo-yo itself was not invented by a Filipino. According to Philippine science outlet FlipScience, the oldest confirmed records date to around 500 BC in ancient Greece, and the toy had reached Europe by the early 1800s. The name “yo-yo,” however, is thought likely to come from the Philippines' Ilocano language, and it had long been a familiar pastime in the Philippines.
Pedro Flores was born in 1896 in Vintar, Ilocos Norte, in the northern Philippines, and moved to the United States in 1915. After studying law, he was working as a bellboy in California when he remembered the yo-yo he had played with as a child, and in 1928 he founded a yo-yo manufacturing company in Santa Barbara. According to FlipScience, he was the first person to mass-produce yo-yos, and his design, which looped the string around the axle instead of tying it, made a wide range of tricks possible, including the “sleeper,” in which the yo-yo keeps spinning in place.
2. Strategy one: Live demonstrations, born from 'it won't sell unless people see it'
According to the Smithsonian Institution's invention history site, Flores believed the yo-yo would not sell unless people actually saw the tricks, so he hired Filipino yo-yo experts to demonstrate them in different places. By early 1929 he had produced more than 100,000 yo-yos and marketed them as “the only genuine” ones.
These demonstration teams also played a central role under Donald F. Duncan, who later took over the business. According to a company history on Encyclopedia.com, Duncan hired mainly Filipino demonstrators to tour the United States and show off tricks at places such as candy stores. The demonstrators carved birds and palm trees into wooden yo-yos, adding an exotic touch to the product.
3. Strategy two: Contests anyone could enter to build excitement
Flores's other invention was the yo-yo contest. According to Encyclopedia.com, from late 1928 he organized contests that measured how long a yo-yo could spin, how far it could be thrown and how many tricks a player could land in five minutes. The Smithsonian highlights that he offered prizes for every level of skill. Beginners could take part, and those who improved could aim for higher-level contests, turning buyers into devoted fans.
The contests spread across the United States and lifted sales, and in 1932 the first world yo-yo contest was held in London. Turning a domestic fad into an international event gave the yo-yo a foothold as a toy around the world.
4. Strategy three: Scaling up with the media
The person who took Flores's methods to a large scale was Duncan, who saw a yo-yo in San Francisco in 1928. According to the Smithsonian, Duncan raised US$5,000 to buy the first rights from Flores and by October 1932 had acquired the remaining assets, including the trademark. Flores himself helped Duncan launch contests in the early 1930s.
Duncan partnered with newspapers owned by press baron William Randolph Hearst. According to Encyclopedia.com, the newspapers ran contest advertising for free, and in return entry was limited to people who had signed up three new newspaper subscriptions. One campaign in Philadelphia was reported to have sold 3 million yo-yos in 30 days. The excitement generated by demonstrations and contests was combined with the media's reach to expand nationwide in one stroke.
5. What came after
Duncan remained the largest yo-yo maker in the United States until it lost a trademark lawsuit in 1965. According to Encyclopedia.com, it sold a record 33 million yo-yos in 1963. Selling through demonstrators was revived in the early 1970s, and contests surged again in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997, 1 million yo-yos were reportedly sold in Japan in just two months.
Across eras and countries, every yo-yo boom has followed the same pattern: demonstrators show off tricks, contests give players goals, and the media and events draw people in. This shows how repeatable the method Flores put together in the 1920s really was.
6. The 'Flores model' in modern marketing
In today's terms, Flores's strategies come down to three things: demonstrations that convey a product's value through experience; community-based competitions and challenges that give users goals and a place to take part; and partner-driven audience-building that designs entry conditions together with outside media. Many methods companies use routinely today, such as demonstration events, user-participation campaigns that test skill and challenge posts on social media, can be seen as extensions of this combination.
Especially notable is that Flores chose a community of Filipinos who had grown up with the yo-yo as his demonstrators. Putting the people who know a product best in the role of messengers, and making their skill part of the product's appeal, connects directly to modern Philippine marketing built around influencers and creators.
