The Rubber Duck
The appeal of the rubber duck is well conveyed in a passage from Right Ho, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse, published in 1934. The young aristocrat Bertie Wooster, embroiled as usual in several different dilemmas, finds one as he is taking a bath in his aunt's stately home:
The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn.
I can't remember ever owning a rubber duck in childhood. Like many of the trappings of childhood, I only experienced rubber ducks when I was an adult. Plenty of bath toys, but no rubber ducks.
The rubber duck is a hollow toy duck that is designed to float in the bath. It's usually yellow, which may be because the ducklings of domestic ducks (ducks bred by humans) are bright yellow. It can usually be squeezed. Today most rubber ducks are not actually made of rubber, but a sort of vinyl. In fact, rubber ducks were only rubber for a short time, as manufacturers quickly replaced rubber with plastic, then vinyl.
Strangely enough, the rubber duck as we know it today has a single inventor, who died as recently as 1974. His name was Peter Ganine. Giving us the rubber duck in its classic form isn't even his main claim to fame. Wikipedia tells us he was "a Russian-American sculptor best known for his work in ceramics and his chess sets". Rubber ducks had been made before Ganine, but they didn't float-- they were chew toys. Ganine made an "uncapsizeable" rubber duck, in the nineteen-forties, and many millions were sold-- some sources give a figure of fifty million.
Rubber
duck collecting is a popular past-time. Check out the website
Duckshow.com to see how many different rubber ducks are available.
Another website is Duckplanet.com, whose webmistress describes it thus: "Duckplanet
has been providing information to online rubber duck fans since October
of 2000. Duckplanet began as a way for Charlotte to share her
collection with friends, family, and other duck-minded people. Today,
Duckplanet is the most extensive source of rubber duck news and
information on the web. Charlotte began collecting rubber ducks in 1996.
Today, Charlotte has over seven thousand unique rubber ducks." Duckshow.com mentions that new novelty rubber ducks are often sold in shops at Easter, which makes sense.
"Rubber duck debugging" is a term used by computer programmers to describe a process whereby a programmer finds a "bug" (problem) by explaining the programme out loud to someone else-- for instance, a rubber duck. The term originated in the 1999 book The Pragmatic Programmer.
In 2001, a decorator claimed that he saw an inflatable rubber duck with a crown in Queen Elizabeth's bathroom. Sales of rubber ducks supposedly soared after this news, though I can find no solid source for this.
I'm also sceptical of recent reports that rubber ducks are a health hazard. As the Daily Mail reported in March of this year: "Your rubber duck may appear innocent, but is swarming with bacteria that could make you seriously sick or even kill, research suggests.The popular bath-time companion - and other plastic toys that can squirt water - pose a risk to health, with bugs found including Legionella and drug-resistant superbugs that can cause death.
A study of bath toys found that sitting around in the warm, humid bathroom environment provides an ideal breeding ground for bugs - with ‘dense growths of bacteria and fungi’ building up on the inside of the ducks." How have so many children survived their encounters with these floating killers? Nevertheless, many manufacturers now omit the customary hole in the bottom of the duck, to avoid water collecting inside it.
In 1970, the Sesame Street character Ernie released a song called "Rubber Duckie", which reached number sixteen on the US singles charts. It also featured in the movie Three Men and a Little Lady. Ernie has followed up with subsequent rubber duck-themed songs, including "Do De Rubber Duck", a catchy reggae number which has the surprisingly complex chorus:
And do de duck, rubber duck, duck, rubber duck
Rubber duck, duck, rubber duck, duck, rubber duck
Duck, rubber duck, duck, rubber duck, rubber duck
Duck, rubber duck, rubber duck, duck.
It may have never charted as high as "Rubber Duckie", but it has nine million views on YouTube, easily beating its more famous sister song.
The 1992 film Batman Returns showed the Penguin, a supervillain played by Danny De Vito, travelling through the sewers of the city on a massive rubber duck. (It can also travel on land.) The cheerful and innocent associations of a rubber duck made its use in this context quite chilling.
Rubber duck races became a popular charity event all over the world from the 1990s onwards. The first was held in Phoenix, Arizona in 1988. In these, competitors can buy a rubber duck, which is then released into a river with the other ducks-- often thousands. The record is a quarter of a million, for the Great British Duck Race of 2008.
Since 2007, the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman has been creating enormous floating rubber ducks, made of PVC, which have appeared in many cities throughout the world. They have suffered various mishaps, including vandalism, accidental deflation, and plagiarism. It has also been the source of criticism, as in the article "The Rubber Duck Artist Must be Stopped" by Kriston Capps, on Citylab.com: "Cities that cash in with Rubber Duck are outsourcing their public art, meaning they aren't doing their artists or themselves any favors in the long run. In the same sense that building another Ferris wheel is a sure bet—if one that emblandens a city—tugging the same old Hofman into the bay is a lost opportunity for a place to reach for greatness. Creativity is and ought to be a source of pride for cities as diverse as London, Beijing, and Los Angeles—and an engine for their economies. When I see images of it floating in a new harbor, I can almost hear Rubber Duck whispering, in a raspy duck voice: The place you love is no more."
In her article "Rubber Ducks and Their Significance in Contemporary American Culture" (I'm not making this up; the article was published in The Journal of American Culture in March 3006), Lotte Larsen Meyer argues: "The rubber duck has gradually become a symbol for babies, and for early childhood in general... Day care facilities for infants and toddlers have been named Rubber Ducky... Fodor's travel guides now include a rubber duck symbol next to places suitable for children... The reasons behind the symbolic association may lie in how we view innocence...."Cute" is the word most often heard about rubber ducks. Swimming in water, a cleansing and purifying agent, and being played with by cute, innocent infants, and toddlers, they have no negative associations."
We might remember Bertie Wooster as Meyer goes on to add: "There is substantial evidence that adults derive as much, if not more, pleasure from the toy after their childhood is over.... Nostalgia may be triggered by rubber ducks when adults "play" with them. Parents who use rubber ducks with their children (as tools or bathroom toy) may be recovering "their lost worlds of wonder through the wondrous innocence of their children's encounter with commercial novelty".
If this isn't enough rubber duck information for you, you can always go onto Amazon and buy Rubber Duckie by Jodie Davis, described on the site thus: "This nostalgic kit explains how the familiar tub toy became a true icon of childhood, and why it's become so collectible. Featuring a classic rubber duck plus an 80 page book detailing history, trivia, and trends, illustrated with photos of the author's extensive collection, it's an essential for kitsch aficionados."
The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn.
I can't remember ever owning a rubber duck in childhood. Like many of the trappings of childhood, I only experienced rubber ducks when I was an adult. Plenty of bath toys, but no rubber ducks.
The rubber duck is a hollow toy duck that is designed to float in the bath. It's usually yellow, which may be because the ducklings of domestic ducks (ducks bred by humans) are bright yellow. It can usually be squeezed. Today most rubber ducks are not actually made of rubber, but a sort of vinyl. In fact, rubber ducks were only rubber for a short time, as manufacturers quickly replaced rubber with plastic, then vinyl.
Strangely enough, the rubber duck as we know it today has a single inventor, who died as recently as 1974. His name was Peter Ganine. Giving us the rubber duck in its classic form isn't even his main claim to fame. Wikipedia tells us he was "a Russian-American sculptor best known for his work in ceramics and his chess sets". Rubber ducks had been made before Ganine, but they didn't float-- they were chew toys. Ganine made an "uncapsizeable" rubber duck, in the nineteen-forties, and many millions were sold-- some sources give a figure of fifty million.
 | |||||
| Peter Ganine |
The forum on Duckplanet. com has been going since 2005 and has over 24,000 posts on over three thousand topics.
Rubber ducks have entered into popular discourse in various interesting ways.
"Rubber duck debugging" is a term used by computer programmers to describe a process whereby a programmer finds a "bug" (problem) by explaining the programme out loud to someone else-- for instance, a rubber duck. The term originated in the 1999 book The Pragmatic Programmer.
In 2001, a decorator claimed that he saw an inflatable rubber duck with a crown in Queen Elizabeth's bathroom. Sales of rubber ducks supposedly soared after this news, though I can find no solid source for this.
I'm also sceptical of recent reports that rubber ducks are a health hazard. As the Daily Mail reported in March of this year: "Your rubber duck may appear innocent, but is swarming with bacteria that could make you seriously sick or even kill, research suggests.The popular bath-time companion - and other plastic toys that can squirt water - pose a risk to health, with bugs found including Legionella and drug-resistant superbugs that can cause death.
A study of bath toys found that sitting around in the warm, humid bathroom environment provides an ideal breeding ground for bugs - with ‘dense growths of bacteria and fungi’ building up on the inside of the ducks." How have so many children survived their encounters with these floating killers? Nevertheless, many manufacturers now omit the customary hole in the bottom of the duck, to avoid water collecting inside it.
In 1970, the Sesame Street character Ernie released a song called "Rubber Duckie", which reached number sixteen on the US singles charts. It also featured in the movie Three Men and a Little Lady. Ernie has followed up with subsequent rubber duck-themed songs, including "Do De Rubber Duck", a catchy reggae number which has the surprisingly complex chorus:
And do de duck, rubber duck, duck, rubber duck
Rubber duck, duck, rubber duck, duck, rubber duck
Duck, rubber duck, duck, rubber duck, rubber duck
Duck, rubber duck, rubber duck, duck.
It may have never charted as high as "Rubber Duckie", but it has nine million views on YouTube, easily beating its more famous sister song.
The 1992 film Batman Returns showed the Penguin, a supervillain played by Danny De Vito, travelling through the sewers of the city on a massive rubber duck. (It can also travel on land.) The cheerful and innocent associations of a rubber duck made its use in this context quite chilling.
Rubber duck races became a popular charity event all over the world from the 1990s onwards. The first was held in Phoenix, Arizona in 1988. In these, competitors can buy a rubber duck, which is then released into a river with the other ducks-- often thousands. The record is a quarter of a million, for the Great British Duck Race of 2008.
Since 2007, the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman has been creating enormous floating rubber ducks, made of PVC, which have appeared in many cities throughout the world. They have suffered various mishaps, including vandalism, accidental deflation, and plagiarism. It has also been the source of criticism, as in the article "The Rubber Duck Artist Must be Stopped" by Kriston Capps, on Citylab.com: "Cities that cash in with Rubber Duck are outsourcing their public art, meaning they aren't doing their artists or themselves any favors in the long run. In the same sense that building another Ferris wheel is a sure bet—if one that emblandens a city—tugging the same old Hofman into the bay is a lost opportunity for a place to reach for greatness. Creativity is and ought to be a source of pride for cities as diverse as London, Beijing, and Los Angeles—and an engine for their economies. When I see images of it floating in a new harbor, I can almost hear Rubber Duck whispering, in a raspy duck voice: The place you love is no more."
In her article "Rubber Ducks and Their Significance in Contemporary American Culture" (I'm not making this up; the article was published in The Journal of American Culture in March 3006), Lotte Larsen Meyer argues: "The rubber duck has gradually become a symbol for babies, and for early childhood in general... Day care facilities for infants and toddlers have been named Rubber Ducky... Fodor's travel guides now include a rubber duck symbol next to places suitable for children... The reasons behind the symbolic association may lie in how we view innocence...."Cute" is the word most often heard about rubber ducks. Swimming in water, a cleansing and purifying agent, and being played with by cute, innocent infants, and toddlers, they have no negative associations."
We might remember Bertie Wooster as Meyer goes on to add: "There is substantial evidence that adults derive as much, if not more, pleasure from the toy after their childhood is over.... Nostalgia may be triggered by rubber ducks when adults "play" with them. Parents who use rubber ducks with their children (as tools or bathroom toy) may be recovering "their lost worlds of wonder through the wondrous innocence of their children's encounter with commercial novelty".
If this isn't enough rubber duck information for you, you can always go onto Amazon and buy Rubber Duckie by Jodie Davis, described on the site thus: "This nostalgic kit explains how the familiar tub toy became a true icon of childhood, and why it's become so collectible. Featuring a classic rubber duck plus an 80 page book detailing history, trivia, and trends, illustrated with photos of the author's extensive collection, it's an essential for kitsch aficionados."
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