Of Rubber Ducks!
- A Crazy Little Bird Told Me
- Jun 1
- 6 min read
Today, I will be taking you on a journey about rubber ducks! Why, you may ask? Why not, I shall answer!
Before we start, let me express two concerns.
First, I was initially going to write about butterflies, in an attempt to understand where the name comes from, considering those little critters are neither made of butter nor are they flies. Strangely enough, there isn't much information online about the origin of the word.
Which brings me to my second concern.
There are a lot—and I mean a lot—of websites dedicated to the history of rubber ducks. Part of me is very thankful, as it reinforces my belief that we really should spend more time talking about those little floaters (yes, that sounds very wrong when phrased like that!). At the same time, however, it is slightly worrisome, no?
But really, what do we know about those little toys? Where do they come from? Why, oh why, are they associated with bath time? And why, oh why, are they so iconic?
Do you know anybody who doesn't, at the very least, find them cute?
Alright, alright, let's go back to the beginning. Where do those babies come from?
No, they didn't simply appear one day out of nowhere. No conspiracy there!
Rubber toys first appeared in the late 1800s, when manufacturers began making use of Charles Goodyear's process for turning rubber into a durable and workable material. The first rubber ducks didn't even float; they were cast solid and intended as chew toys.
Let's just pause for a second here, because I hadn't realised rubber had been used for so long!
The earliest archaeological evidence of natural rubber comes from the Olmec civilisation of Central America, which used latex from rubber trees to make balls for the Mesoamerican ballgame as far back as 1200 BC. Not quite the time of the dinosaurs, but still a very long time ago!
The story of rubber is also tied to the story of empires. During much of the nineteenth century, South America remained the world's main source of natural latex. In 1876, British explorer Henry Wickham famously smuggled thousands of rubber tree seeds out of Brazil. The surviving seedlings were sent across the British Empire, eventually establishing plantations in places such as India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Singapore, and Malaya.
As demand for rubber grew, so did the human cost. In some regions, particularly the Congo Free State, rubber was harvested through systems of forced labour that left a dark stain on the industry's history. One day we may need to have a proper conversation about King Leopold II, because that man was really not a good man, was he?
Meanwhile, back in the world of ducks...
Between 1831 and 1839, Charles Goodyear spent years experimenting with natural rubber, trying to find a way to make it more durable and practical. His breakthrough came when he discovered vulcanisation, a process involving rubber, sulphur, and heat that transformed the material from a sticky nuisance into something that could withstand everyday use.
Without that discovery, rubber ducks might never have existed. And that would have been a terrible tragedy indeed.
Now, let me get back to our rubber ducks before I disappear down another historical rabbit hole.
In the 1940s, sculptor Peter Ganine created a floating duck toy based on one of his sculptures. Ganine, a Georgian-Russian-American artist best known for his ceramics and chess sets (and, apparently, a prize-winning toy whale), patented what he described as an "uncapsizeable duck" and reproduced it as a floating toy. More than 50 million of them were sold.
These ducks eventually evolved into the iconic yellow figure with the bright orange bill that we recognise today.
As it turns out, people are rather fond of rubber ducks.
In 2011, Charlotte Lee set the Guinness World Record for the world's largest rubber duck collection, with an impressive 5,631 different ducks. Two years later, in 2013, the humble rubber duck was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame alongside another timeless classic: the game of chess. Apparently, ducks and chess have more in common than I realised?
And then there is the world's largest rubber duck.
Created in 2007 by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, it measured 32 metres long, 20 metres wide, and 16.5 metres high.
Not sure why I am sharing that one, but that seems a bit... big.
And now we arrive at what may be my favourite rubber duck story of all.
On 10 January 1992, during a Pacific storm, three shipping containers were washed off a cargo ship. Inside were 28,800 Friendly Floatees bath toys fresh from a factory in China.
Among the escapees were 7,200 yellow ducks, accompanied by an equal number of blue turtles, red beavers, and green frogs.
Unlike most cargo lost at sea, however, these little travellers floated. Lots of them.
Over the following months, thousands washed ashore in Indonesia, Australia, and South America. Others headed north towards Alaska before becoming trapped in Arctic ice. Some eventually emerged years later in the North Atlantic after travelling thousands of miles on ocean currents.
At this point, I should probably mention that oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer was tracking them. Which means that somewhere in the world there was a scientist whose job involved following the adventures of runaway bath toys across the globe.
I am not entirely sure how one gets that job, but I suspect it comes with excellent stories.
Years of sun and seawater bleached the ducks and beavers white, while the turtles and frogs somehow managed to keep their original colours. The wandering toys became an unexpected source of information for scientists studying ocean currents.
The incident was later immortalised in Donovan Hohn's 2011 book Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and inspired Eric Carle's children's book 10 Little Rubber Ducks.
Not bad for a group of toys that simply failed to stay in their shipping container.
For many decades, most rubber ducks have not actually been made of rubber at all, but of vinyl. Apparently, once something becomes iconic enough, facts become optional.
Rubber ducks became firmly associated with bath time in 1970 when Ernie, the cheerful orange Muppet from Sesame Street, sang "Rubber Duckie" to his favourite bath companion. The song became unexpectedly popular, reaching number 16 on the Billboard charts. Decades later, children are still singing along.
As if all of that wasn't enough, people also race rubber ducks.
Rubber duck races, sometimes called derby duck races, are held around the world to raise money for charities. Participants sponsor a duck, thousands of the little competitors are released into a river or waterway, and the first duck to cross the finish line wins a prize.
I like to imagine that after travelling around the world, inspiring books, becoming a chart-topping song, and earning a place in the Toy Hall of Fame, rubber ducks collectively decided that competitive sport was the next logical step.
With all those duck races, shipping accidents, and thousands of bath toys wandering around the world's oceans, perhaps we should spend a moment talking about the environmental side of our little yellow friends.
I know, quite a Debbie Downer ending, but only seems fair.
For many decades, most rubber ducks have actually been made from PVC (polyvinyl chloride), a type of plastic derived from petroleum. Unlike the cheerful image they project, these ducks do not simply disappear when discarded. They can remain in landfills and oceans for decades, slowly breaking down into smaller fragments that are far less cute than the original duck.
And there are a lot of things floating around our oceans already.
Millions of shipping containers are transported around the world every year, and thousands are lost at sea. Most of us rarely think about where our everyday objects come from, how far they travel, or where they eventually end up.
Rubber ducks are no exception.
PVC is made from petroleum, which itself was formed over millions of years from ancient organic matter buried deep beneath the Earth. Humans began extracting oil on an industrial scale in the nineteenth century, and in just a few generations we have managed to consume an astonishing amount of it.
I am not going to pretend I know exactly how much oil we have left. Entire industries, governments, and economists spend their careers arguing about that question. But I do find it remarkable that something created over millions of years can be extracted and consumed by humanity in little more than a couple of centuries.
That is quite an achievement. Whether it is an achievement we should be proud of is perhaps a different question.
And there I go again, disappearing down another rabbit hole.
Let's return to happier thoughts. A yellow rubber duck floating peacefully in a bathtub; no shipping containers; no petroleum; no global supply chains. Just a duck doing what ducks do best: minding its own business and making bath time slightly more cheerful.
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