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[ta0]

I finally solved the mystery of the origin of the Rascals, but now I have a bigger mystery about how they should supposedly be played!
The Rascals belong to the lore of the US spintop community since before I got into tops (thread 1, thread 2). I was always intrigued about how somebody came up with this simple idea and had enough confidence on its success to make a product out of it.



At first I thought the metal tops were something else re-purposed as tops in order to sell them. But then I saw the plastic ones in the packages and there was no doubt anymore that they were tops. This is a photo from Kevinm:



I finally got my own Rascal on the card last week, what gave me the info I needed it to trace it. The instructions have a 1989 copyright and trademark from PIJ Enterprises Inc., from Saint Paul, Minnesota (also says patent pending). Could not find a patent, but I did find the registered trademark for a Rascal board game from May 1989. Then I looked at the Minnesota incorporation archives and found that PIJ Enterprises, with a Minneapolis address, was registered on 2/8/89 and administratively dissolved on 12/31/93. The registration agent was a Philip I. Jegede. This is not a common last name in Minneapolis and an internet search found many references to Rev. Dr. Philip Idemudia (Jay) Jegede, a serial entrepreneur and Evangelist from Minneapolis but originally from Nigeria. He seems to be quite a colorful fellow who has been involved in an amazing number of endeavors. Suffice to say that in 2003 he was sued by Pfizer, over the name of a tea he was selling: Joyagra. 

I wrote to Jegede through a contact form on one of his websites but after a couple of days I got impatient and gave him a call. We had a nice conversation after he got over the surprise of my call. He told me that the top came from his native Nigeria where it was very popular. He also developed a game board using these tops (this was not something from Nigeria), but he had none left in his possession and did not remember very well its details. He sold them through local businesses and even the local Target. He did confirm that the way it is supposed to be played (the way it is played back in the old country) is by first spinning the Rascal on the hand and then "capsizing" the top to cover something. When I told him that I could not do it he answered that it took practice but that it was not easy to describe on the phone. He suggested that I found somebody from Nigeria to show me as it was very popular over there. I asked him about the metal vs. plastic versions. He said the plastic ones were safer but the metal ones played better. But he also said that he did not produce the metal ones!  This is very surprising as we know from Mark that he found them together in the same surplus shop in Minneapolis. Also, in Tim's Best Toys from 1993 video (thread) he shows an open package with a metal Rascal, implying that it came from it. Perhaps there was somebody else from the Minneapolis Nigerian community selling those? A little mystery.

The real mystery now is on how to play them. More later . . .

[ta0]

This is one side of the Rascal's instructions sheet:



As you can see, many of the tricks consist on flipping the Rascal. But something that is spinning tries to preserve the direction of its spinning axis and won't just flip by itself. You need to apply a torque and I don't see how. Before talking to Jegede I had dismissed the instructions as just fantasy (even though I had challenged Jakub and Daniel to do something similar with the sombrero cap ). But he insisted this was the case. And then there is the Nigerian connection . . .

Jegede gave me two names for the top in Nigeria: ikoto and koso.  I only found two good relevant pages. On a page about Nigerian childhood games I found this:

Akokoro – This is played by two people (usually boys) using a small snail shell or soft metal sheet shaped like a snail shell. One of the players spins the shell/cone and while it is spinning swipes it or ‘cuts’ it with a sweeping stroke of the finger to make the base of the cone land flat on the ground. The winning player is usually the player who can successfully make the base of the cone land flat. Unless the cone lands in this manner, a player is unsuccessful. When a player has achieved this feat and the other has not, the player who fails offers his hand to the winning player for a ‘strike’ – the winner uses the cone to forcefully hit the back of the loser’s hand. The game is also known as Okoto.

The other is on a Nigerian photo of the day page where it is asked who recognizes and has played with this:



It has 242 answers in the thread. It seems that this is a homemade toy that goes by a lot of names: okoto, okooto, okota, ikoto, takoto, koto, koso, okosi, kodi, kovoso, kooso, koroso, korosa, cosun, okoso, ikoso, kuso, koto, biri biri, vin vin, alikoto, olo! But the descriptions seem to be consistent with spinning and flipping. Many say they were very good at it. One says that he did not like to play because of the penalty for losing was painful (the strike on the back of the hand).

The caption says: "Those that are born in the 1980s and 1990s will remember this!"  I suspect they wanted to say those who were kids in those years.

There is a prize if somebody can find a video of kids playing this game!

[ta0]

Thanks to Wikipedia I learned that the 3 main language of Nigeria, besides English, are: Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa, each one spoken by over 25 million people in Nigeria.
Google translate has the three of them, so I tried the names above. The most significant matches I found were:

In the Igbo language the word okoso means cone  bingo! 
In the Yoruba language the world ikoto means seashell
In the Hausa language the world kodi means snail

There are other matches but are not clear. For example:
The most common name mentioned on that thread, okoto, means driftwood in Yoruba.
Biri means monkey in Hausa, but settled in Igbo and parcel in Yoruba. 

[jim in paris]

super ! what an investigation , detective Jorge !

thanx for sharing ! nigeria ! incredible ! and another man of church involved in a spintop story ///


jim

[Jack]

this is very intriguing 

[ta0]

I imagine this started like the beigomas, with conical shells that people just collected and only later they were made from artificial materials. There are many seashells with the required shape (I don't know specifically about the Nigeria coast and the Niger river, but I bet there are). It could also be from ground snails: I found that they have over there farms that raise snails with conical shells.

On the photo thread, people mention using the "cover of machine oil" and also the "cover of mosquito powder" and the "cover of insecticide".
But most mention building one with a pen cap (Bic or Eleganza brand) and the "cover/neck/top" of a battery (Tiger Head brand). One describes it as the "round blue rubber from a condemned battery". Specifically, the one on that photo is supposedly the combination of a blue Bic pen cap and the top of a battery. The battery is described as "big" and "ba3" but I cannot find that size. I imagine it is a D battery.



In 1991 Bic modified the cap to add a hole at the end for safety reasons. It might have saved some children from chocking (although unfortunately it still happens) but it was not good for top spinning 

[the Earl of Whirl]

I have some plastic and some metal ones.  From my spin experience, the metal ones are charming and fun to play with.  The plastic ones do not have the same nice sound, they do not stack very well and they just do not seem to have the same element of fun as the metal ones.  Maybe I have not experimented enough with the plastic rascals?  I will have to try them again.  I will also have to think about some of the research ta0 has presented.

I always enjoy reading Mark's detailed account on wiki of some rascal history!!!

[ta0]

I always enjoy reading Mark's detailed account on wiki of some rascal history!!!

Yes, the story of how he popularized the Rascals in the juggling community and eventually with top players is very interesting: http://spinningtop.wikia.com/wiki/Rascals
On an email that Mark sent me he provided a little more information about the stock at the surplus store in Minneapolis:

They had plastic Rascals on the card, metal ones in plastic boxes with torn cards, and a big bin of bulk metal ones. I bought a few in the package for me and my collector friend Mark Anderson, and after much hand-wringing, I bought the entire box of bulk metal ones. I never counted them, but my guess was that there were a couple of thousand of them.

I believe Don has a metal one in a plastic box and came with the same instructions. I would like Don or Mark to confirm this because I am still puzzled by Jegede's claim that the metal ones were not his.

[Jeremy McCreary]

Wow, just made some cool Rascal-like LEGO throwing tops twirled by their tips, and man, are they fun! Will post photos and video shortly in a new thread. Meanwhile, 2 questions for anyone, please:

1. How much do plastic and metal Rascals weigh, preferably in grams?

2. How long does each spin if left alone on a good surface.

Thanks!

[ta0]

1. How much do plastic and metal Rascals weigh, preferably in grams?
2. How long does each spin if left alone on a good surface.

The plastic are 5.1 grams. The metal ones vary a bit but the average from a 9 stack was 10.3 grams.

I am not the strongest finger spinner. I just got 30 seconds with the plastic one and 40 seconds with the metal one on a wooden floor (not very smooth).

[Jeremy McCreary]

Thanks, ta0 -- exactly the data I was looking for and then some!

I'm thinking of this exciting new line of small LEGO finger tops generically as "underhand throwing tops" because, like the Rascal, they're meant to be twirled by the tip from underneath, palm up, and thrown at the same time with a snap of the fingers. The resemblance largely ends there, as there's no way to match the Rascal design exactly in a LEGO finger top. But who cares? I've already tried dozens of design possibilities with great results and no end in sight.

I'm especially excited about the throwing games made possible by this powerful small-top launch method. Still seeing no way to make a LEGO top capable of surviving string play, I'd pretty much given up on throwing games in the LEGO realm.

So, move over, beigoma! LEGOMA has arrived!

[MarkHayward]

It seems very strange to me that Jegede would say that he didn't make the metal ones. Perhaps he just means that someone else handled the manufacturing, because they came with the same instruction manual as the plastic ones, and what little there was of the card on the metal packages had the same graphic design as the plastic packaging.

A few of the plastic ones in my collection have the Rascal logo printed on their sides, but most do not.

There are two types of the metal ones: shiny and rusty. The shiny ones (possibly chrome plated) are more slippery so it's hard to get them to spin as long as the rusty ones, which have a better grip. When I was selling them, the jugglers liked the shiny ones and the top spinners liked the rusty ones. When I store my rascals I alternate rusty and shiny in the stack because the rusty ones have a tendency to rust together and get stuck. When that happens, I've found that the best way to get them apart is to throw them hard (not spinning) onto a carpeted floor. They will usually pop apart after a few hard hits on the floor.

[ta0]

Hey Mark, have you asked your aunt who lived in Nigeria in the 70's and studied the Hausa language? She must have some contacts left in/from Nigeria. We need to figure out how these are played!

[ta0]

Here is a metal Rascal in a mint package. I got one of two that appeared on Ebay (I was the only bidder, at least on this one):



The mystery of how it's played remains . . .

[Jeremy McCreary]

Here is a metal Rascal in a mint package. I got one of two that appeared on Ebay....
The mystery of how it's played remains . . .

You lucky dog! The good news: At this point, you're free to try it out and see where that leads.