The Cheerio Yo-Yo & Bo-Lo Company Ltd. was a yo-yo manufacturer with its origins in Canada. Cheerio was owned by Wilf Schlee, who in addition to this Cheerio company, also owned Hi-Ker and Festival. As one of the largest yo-yo manufacturers in the 1930's and 1940's, Cheerio employed a number of demonstrators, including Harvey Lowe, which not only travelled Canada, but also parts of Europe to promote the line. During this period Cheerio was rumoured to have insured the hands of some of their demonstrators for $150,000.00.
In the early 1940's, Cheerio started selling toys in the US and quickly became so popular that the word "Cheerio" almost completely replaced the word "yo-yo" among children. Cloth patches from the era attests to this fact, with no mention of the word "yo-yo", rather the patches state "Cheerio Champion" or "Cheerio Award". In 1954 Duncan bought the Cheerio US operations, and kept making the Cheerio yo-yos for a number of years as an un-promoted line, effectively giving the market to the Duncan-branded line of yo-yos.
In the 1950's and 1960's Cheerio continued operations in Canada. Between 1958 and 1964 Cheerio outsourced the production of the Rainbow and Big Chief yo-yos to Elfverson, a manufacturer based in Sweden. In the same time-period, the yo-yo trademark case in the US was repeated in Canada, with Cheerio Toys and Games Limited V. Cheerio Yo-Yo & Bo-Lo Company Ltd., a case heard in 1964. The ruling in this case was similar to that of the one in the US between Royal and Duncan, in that the yo-yo trademark became irrevocably intertwined with the name of the product, therefore it has lost all distinctiveness associated with a trademark.
In modern times the original Cheerio yo-yos are sought after items by collectors, with well preserved models fetching very high prices on auction sites such as eBay. In addition original Cheerio competition patches and packaged strings also command high-prices from certain niche collectors.
Yo-yos Produced[]
- Kitchener Buttons
- Beginners 55
- Big Chief
- Champion
- Glitterspin
- Pro 99
- Rainbow
- Double Doozer