There are no batteries required, no bouncing figures on a TV screen and no garish prom dresses for a figure that exists only in the minds of toymakers. The basic idea dates to the pre-Christian era and was reborn in circuses, vaudeville and even Grateful Dead concerts.
Now, the lowest-tech toy imaginable is appearing everywhere from grade schools to college campuses: It’s three sticks. Devil sticks, it’s called, and it boils down to old-fashioned juggling, balance and coordination.
Sold under several other names – Mystix, Rhythm Sticks and flower sticks – the toy is essentially three tape-wrapped batons that sell for $15-$20. The main stick, tasseled and brightly colored, is twirled, rolled and batted back and forth between two smaller control sticks.
“The exact origins have been lost, but most people seem to agree it started in the Orient, probably China … and predated Christianity,” says Harvey McLeod, a 25-year-old whose sidewalk stand in Hampton, New Brunswick, grew into a multimillion-dollar company in Montreal.
The craze started on a small scale about five years ago, when McLeod was a “notoriously bad silk screener” trying to sell his handmade T-shirts on the street. He saw his brother playing with a set of the juggling sticks, which were handmade by hippie types and typically sold as “flower sticks” at Grateful Dead shows.
He started juggling them at his T-shirt stand to draw customers. Nobody wanted his shirts, but everybody asked about the sticks.
He decided he would start making them, using wooden dowels and wrapping them with hockey tape and strips of discarded leather jackets. His first week, he sold 20 for $10 each. Within four months, he had sold about 800 sets.
He sold his first set to Chris Freeman, a friend and an amateur juggler who helped him refine the design. The two eventually went into business together, moved to Montreal, got some publicity in the Canadian press and attracted the attention of two businessmen who persuaded them to mass produce the sticks with a “few hundred thousand” of seed money.
The devil in devil sticks is a misnomer, Freeman says. The name has nothing to do with Satan and is actually a variation on a translation of the Greek word “diablo” – or “to toss across.”
In 1995, devil sticks became the No. 1 selling toy in Toys “R” Us of Canada and was picked up by a New York toy company called Happiness Express, which declined to release sales figures.
Amanda Gronich, spokeswoman for FAO Schwarz, says the toy store chain started selling devil sticks in the United States in June.
