A pecking chicken paddle toy

I was picking over some disparate items in a box at auction when I spotted a round paddle board with wooden chickens on the top. It reminded me of the paddle ball toys I’d played with as a child.

You know the one – you hit a red rubber ball against the paddle and try to keep it from falling off. The chickens on top and the wooden ball underneath differentiated this game from the more familiar one. And the string on the ball appeared to be in knots. I tried paddling it, but that didn’t work. I was struggling with it when a woman approached me, remembering the game from her own childhood and offering to show me how it worked.

Red handle in hand, she twirled the toy in a circular motion. I watched in awe and then laughter as the chickens started pecking the board, pulled by the strings on the ball. How neat! What’s it called, I asked. She had long forgotten the name but had kept the memories.

With my new knowledge, I conquered the game and could imagine the fun the woman as child must have had with it. I figured that such a simple but delightful game like this had decades ago lost its allure for children. Just how long can you watch chickens peck?

I was surprised to learn, though, that they were still being made, and apparently are popular in some locales. A very colorful one was selling on amazon.com for $9.99. The description stated that paddle toys were popular in Poland and that they were “entertaining” for children. “Sometimes the simplest toys can be the most fascinating,” a reviewer and buyer wrote.

Prices on eBay were closer to Amazon’s, but a New Jersey auction house last year sold what it described as a folk art chicken paddle for $1,100. The chickens, which had articulated or movable heads, were set in motion by pulling down on a wooden block attached to the strings.

The toy itself was described as a pecking chicken paddle or pecking head chicken paddle. I found other colorful examples with thick-bodied chickens unlike the flat ones on the toy at auction. Some were made in Japan, others in Russia, and someone posted a video of a toy made in Mexico. YouTube had several videos demonstrating how they worked, while another site showed you how to make your own.

The toy is not only for fun and games. Glenn Kotche, a percussionist with the Chicago band Wilco uses his own version and other accompaniments – back massagers and hand fans, vintage teapots and clappers, ceramic tiles and hubcaps – in songs. A 2011 Los Angeles Times story told of him interrupting a rehearsal when he realized he didn’t have his chicken paddle and that it had to be fetched.

In a recent interview in Modern Drummer, Kotche said that he used Scandinavian chicken paddles in the band’s song “Sunloathe.” “I screwed a finger cymbal to the middle of them, so the wooden chickens peck it when I move the paddle in a circle,” he said in the interview. “The guys made fun of me when I recorded that part; they said it sounded like a bunch of elves in a workshop.”

At auction, I was so taken with the toy that I had to demonstrate it for my auction buddy Janet. She usually recalls playing with any game we come across at auction, but didn’t recognize this one. An older man sitting close by was just as fascinated as me, so much so that when his wife joined him later, he recounted in detail how the toy worked. He hadn’t seen anything like it, either.

I wasn’t around when the pecking chickens sold. I’m sure that whoever bought it would get as much a chuckle out of it as the older gentleman and me.

Do you remember the chicken paddle game? I’d love to hear your recollections.