The 70-year-old Berkeley cartoonist has patented his YoBagel, which comes in poppyseed, plain and sesame. Crafted from New England maple, 5,000 of the yo-yos are being produced now by a firm in Maine.
Admittedly, YoBagels are constructed “a little differently” from the spools that have spun around playgrounds and schoolyards for decades, Gans said.
“The axle is much wider” — 3 inches, compared to a quarter-inch in a traditional yo-yo — “so it spins slower. It goes up and down, and the harder you propel it, the faster it comes up.”
YoBagel, which began life as “a little promotion for Brothers Bagels,” might be better compared to another gadget favored by kids: a slingshot.
As in David and Goliath.
Gans cast his stone “just around the time the Noah’s boys came to town and put ’em out of business,” he said. “Never made a bagel in their lives, but they went to business school and they knew marketing. So I did some cartoons for Brothers.”
Discussing his bagel spin-off on the eve of a trip to Europe, he said, “Business is OK.
“I’m having fun with it and that’s what counts.” Nonetheless, pushing the ultimate in hard bagels is a tough sell for the easy-going Gans. “What’s not fun is marketing. I’m an artist, a cartoonist.”
He has also “talked to some people,” including representatives from FAO Schwarz, and is considering catalogue companies, “But I have to run into somebody that does marketing and has the chutzpah for it.”
Calling himself a “computer maven at my age,” Gans works the Net to find what he needs — that’s how he found his Maine-based manufacturer. “They make the parts and send them out, and we put them together.”
Gans himself is accessible by computer at [email protected].
He lives in Berkeley with his wife, Patricia McGrath, an educator whose program to encourage Latino youths to remain in school drew the attention of Vice President Al Gore.
“We got along so we decided to get married,” he said. “We have a nice little Jewish cat named Sid. I go to the coffeehouse twice a day, that’s my community. I have a pretty good, rounded social life.”
He has also designed a series of greeting cards for Marcel Sherman and Recycled Paper, and “I have some toy ideas and some silly dolls.”
And he copped a trademark on the term “thinking cap.”
“Nobody can use it but me,” he said.
He has also done some pro bono work for Jewish community organizations, including a poster of the Olympic flame commemorating the Israeli athletes murdered by terrorists during the 1972 Olympic Games.
But primarily, “I’m oriented toward humor,” he said. “I have a great collection of something I hope will be a book. Yiddish proverbs. My favorite is, ‘If I have to be like you, who’s going to be like me?'”