Rubber Duck - Fun to be with

Rubber Duck – Fun to be with

I have always been a big fan of rubber duck. This toy is my all time favourite and I have many childhood memories associated with it.

But when I grew old, I realized that my fascination for rubber ducks also grew with time. Now I am real big fan of rubber duck races and try to participate as often as possible.

I love the eye-catching coloring of a rubber duck.  Yellow and orange are warm, exciting colors that immediately beckon me to play with them when I was a child.   Even variations on this theme maintain that quality of visual interest.  Modified versions of the standard rubber duck exist in every color of the rainbow.  Some even glow-in-the-dark or change color on contact with water.  Others take the visual aspect to a completely different level with whole lines of themed ducks mimicking celebrities, animals, characters, vocations and the like. 

Yet even in their departure from tradition, all these varieties hark back, with homage or mockery, to the simple attraction of the original and unaffected colors of a traditional rubber duck.

Rubber duck is every kid’s dream toy.

A rubber duck is a toy shaped like a stylised duck, and is generally yellow with a flat base. It may be made of rubber or rubber-like material such as vinyl plastic (which is more often used). The yellow rubber duck has achieved an iconic status in American pop culture and is often symbolically linked to bathing. Its history is linked to the emergence of rubber manufacturing in the late 1800s. The earliest rubber ducks were made from harder rubber.

"Rubber Duckie" is Ernie's signature song, a tribute to his beloved rubber duck. The song became very popular, reaching number 16 on Billboard's "Hot 100 Singles" chart in1970. It was even nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children, but it lost to The Sesame Street Book & Record, which, ironically, also contains the song. Jim Henson popularized rubber ducks in 1970, performing the songs "Rubber Duckie" and "DUCKIE" as Ernie, a popular Muppet from Sesame Street.

Rubber Duck Race

A rubber duck is a toy shaped like a stylized duck, and is generally yellow with a flat base. It may be made of rubber or rubber-like material such as  vinyl plastic (which is more often used). The yellow rubber duck is often symbolically linked to bathing.
Rubber Ducks have become fun activity for fun lovers .Some charities have run rubber duck races in which hundreds or thousands of rubber ducks are dumped into a river, pool, or other body of water and then floated down a race course marked off with buoys. The first one to float past the finish line is the winner. The rubber ducks are then retrieved and used again later. Due to environmental concerns, sites for duck races must be chosen with care.

There are hundreds of races held in the USA and internationally. The largest race in the United States benefits the Freestore Foodbank in Ohio over 100,000 ducks are raced to raise money for the organization.

One of the more famous rubber duck races is the Great  Knozville Rubber Duck Race. This race received attention when the Tennesse Supeme Court led that it was a lottery, which stopped the race for a few years. After the state amended its constitution to allow lotteries with special exceptions, the race was reinstituted.

A famous rubber duck race is theHalifax  Duck Derby  This race has 10,000 rubber ducks in the Halifax Harbour along Bishops Landing. There is a grand prize of $1 million Canadian dollars, and other prizes of trip anywhere in Canada, large screen TVs, and more.

Another famous rubber duck race is the fast-growing Ken-Ducky Derby, held in Louisville, KY, and benefiting Harbor House of Louisville, a training and development facility for adults with disabilities. Accompanying the duck race is the Ken-Ducky Derby Family Festival with activities, arts and crafts, games, food and vendor booths for all ages. This event typically takes place on a Saturday at the end of September.

One other race was conducted in Austrailia  in January 1988. It was run from the "High-level Bridge" to the "Low-level Bridge" near Katherine, New Territories.