Saturday, July 16, 2011

Saturday Gift Post--The Boswell Yo-yo

So it all started when I met with Jane, one of our 10,000 (seemingly) gift reps. Among other lines she told me about were these wooden toys made in the United States by Holgate.  Wow, I get a lot of requests for things like that. 

I wound up pawing through the catalog (as did Amie and Pam and Anne) and we came up with a whole bunch of nifty things--toy boats and trains and blocks and lacing beads and these crazy spinners. I liked the spinners best, actually, though I haven't had much luck selling them yet.  You have to approach the idea of fun in a different, mind-expanding day. Bear with me on that idea, as it will come up again.

The stuff came in and it looked great, and as I revisited the catalog to see what else they had, I came upon this note that they did personalized imprinting, and one of the things they made was a yo-yo.  How cool is that?  Of course I couldn't just put Bos on it, or folks would think we just dug it out of the basement on Fifth Street. 

We played around with colors and decided that an assortment of blue and red would be best. The order was placed and I waited with anticipation.

They came.

I opened the box.

And there they were, Boswell yo-yos.  Only they weren't round.  They were square and hexagonal and even clover shaped. Not a round one in the bunch, even though they showed a traditional yo yo in the catalog.  They were called G-yos.  I sort of freaked out. I wrote to Jane.

Then I calmed down, and showed it to Jason and Anne and Beverly. 

"Does it work?"

I tried it.

I did.

And then I thought, what's so interesting about a round yo-yo anyway? Somebody shopping at Boswell would expect nothing less from us than a clover-shaped yo-yo.

I wrote back to Jane. All was good with the world.

(Editor's note: the yo yos are now $5.95 for all)
Hey, here's a middle-aged man trying to remember how to yo-yo!

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