Okay, so I’m sort of watching Octopussy, and the scene with the radial saw blade yo-yo of death comes on, and I got to thinking: The toy yo-yo is supposedly based on a Filipino weapon of some sort. So, what’d the Filipino weapon (if there was one) look like and how did it work?
D’oh!
The Substitute 2 (or 3), starring Treat Williams, features Williams’s veteran/mercenary/substitute-teacher-in-blackboard-jungle character lecturing a classroom full of gang members on why it’s important to know history and geography. He starts playing with a yo-yo and talking about the Phillipines, rudeness ensues, and soon he breaks some kid’s nose - with his yo-yo.
They’re really, really, bad movies.
Looking through old classics journals, I came across an account of an ancient Greek statue that once held — a yo-yo!
What’s interesting is that this was before the term “yo-yo” had entered the American lexicon. The author called the toy an “aristobolus” (not a “disk”, as in Dex’s article). Where he got that term from I do not know.