I LOVE A POP-CULTURE MYSTERY!!!
Apr. 16th, 2011 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captain_slinkyFound an awesome item at The Goodwill Outlet today, it has me very excited :) Simply put, it's a Roy Rogers & Trigger Yo-Yo made by All Western Plastics of Nebraska. Made of plastic, it is marbled red plastic on the outer rim and a clear blue window on the front and back; front shows a picture of Roy Rogers and his horse (Trigger), the back has a paragraph of text telling kids that Roy will be out there looking to name a Cowboy King and Queen of Yo-Yos for the All Western Plastics company, so they should be sure to keep an eye on the newspapers and the theaters for more information. Very nice, and I am proud to own a Roy Rogers & Trigger Yo-Yo :)
Ahh, but there's a MYSTERY to it!
When we got home, I started researching this item. I've seen a lot of Royu Rogers stuff over the years and since he is so closely associated with The Fifties I would think that I would have seen or heard of a Roy Rogers Yo-Yo. Ends up, this item doesn't *really* exist...
Back in the 1940's, the All Western Plastics Company made plastic saddles... y'know, for riding horses. Something about finding an alternative to leather because of the war effort and our military needing to make leather bombs to drop on Hitler or something. These saddles are scarce, with some estimates as low as only 60 of them ever having been made. A few of those saddles were in the collection of Roy Rogers who LOVED them and often used them in public appearances because they were just so darned pretty! A deal was struck between All Western Plastics and The King of The Cowboys where Roy and his horse would be the spokesmen for the company, which was about to do some major growing.
In 1949 they moved their operation from Wyoming to Nebraska, where the history of the company gets kind of foggy. As best as I can determine, the factory was hit by a tornado and they just gave up after that; the company dissolved, the employees went unpaid, the factory lay in ruin. Eventually a few of the old factory workers went back to gather their own belongings and maybe slavage whatever they could since a=it had all been abandoned, and most everybody walked away with a few barels full of the only product they ever got around to making; ROY ROGERS YO-YO'S. They didn't start popping up on the collector circuit till the 1970's, and even then it was just a few at a time. Despite being an extremely rare and unique collectible featuring one of the most cross-collectible American icons of all time, prices for these items have never really gotten that high because no one has any fond memroies of using a Roy Rogers & Trigger All Western Plastic Yo-Yo.
Today you can find these yo-yo's at extremely reasonable prices between $20-$40 each, and even mint-condition display cases full of them still sealed! What a great opportunity to own a rare oddity of pop-cultural history :)
Ahh, but there's a MYSTERY to it!
When we got home, I started researching this item. I've seen a lot of Royu Rogers stuff over the years and since he is so closely associated with The Fifties I would think that I would have seen or heard of a Roy Rogers Yo-Yo. Ends up, this item doesn't *really* exist...
Back in the 1940's, the All Western Plastics Company made plastic saddles... y'know, for riding horses. Something about finding an alternative to leather because of the war effort and our military needing to make leather bombs to drop on Hitler or something. These saddles are scarce, with some estimates as low as only 60 of them ever having been made. A few of those saddles were in the collection of Roy Rogers who LOVED them and often used them in public appearances because they were just so darned pretty! A deal was struck between All Western Plastics and The King of The Cowboys where Roy and his horse would be the spokesmen for the company, which was about to do some major growing.
In 1949 they moved their operation from Wyoming to Nebraska, where the history of the company gets kind of foggy. As best as I can determine, the factory was hit by a tornado and they just gave up after that; the company dissolved, the employees went unpaid, the factory lay in ruin. Eventually a few of the old factory workers went back to gather their own belongings and maybe slavage whatever they could since a=it had all been abandoned, and most everybody walked away with a few barels full of the only product they ever got around to making; ROY ROGERS YO-YO'S. They didn't start popping up on the collector circuit till the 1970's, and even then it was just a few at a time. Despite being an extremely rare and unique collectible featuring one of the most cross-collectible American icons of all time, prices for these items have never really gotten that high because no one has any fond memroies of using a Roy Rogers & Trigger All Western Plastic Yo-Yo.
Today you can find these yo-yo's at extremely reasonable prices between $20-$40 each, and even mint-condition display cases full of them still sealed! What a great opportunity to own a rare oddity of pop-cultural history :)
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Date: 2011-04-18 05:08 am (UTC)