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THE great dash to master the long-lost art of playing the diabolo is believed to have started at St Christopher's School and spread across the kingdom's schools like wildfire.
Playgrounds, streets and compounds from Sitra to Sanabis and Budaiya to Busaiteen can be seen full of children mastering the skills of the toy, although parents have been asked to keep them in their bags on the way in and out of schools for safety reasons.
"Diabolo teaches a very important lesson of perseverance and in order to master it one requires patience, practice and concentration," said Ian Fellows, head teacher at St Christopher's Infant School.
"We had some Year 6 students demonstrate diabolo tricks to the Infant School children which is probably how the trend caught on in this school. The point of the demonstration to the young ones was that with perseverance you can achieve anything - and suddenly it took off!"
It is also one of those rare unisex games and as much a delight for boys as it is for girls.
And as the craze for diabolos spread so did the demand. The supply of this contraption has been erratic to say the least which compelled many parents to order the toy via the internet.
Pleading demands from children have even had parents dishing out up to BD15 for the prize purchase. Many others have asked friends to pick up diabolos on their visits abroad and to bring them back to the island much to their children's delight.
Milan Malik, 11, a St Christopher's student and a diabolo enthusiast ordered his diabolo from firetoys.com saying that: "I had to have it as all my friends had it. It was 'the' toy to play with during playtime in school."
Carousel, the toy store in Isa Town, brought in supplies of diabolo - approximately 200 pieces - in February but was out of stock in March. Each plastic diabolo with wooden sticks came with its own CD of tricks and was sold for BD12.
Similar diabolos were wiped off the shelves in two days last week when the toy store received 48 pieces to cater to its customers who had put their name down to reserve the contraption.
Carousel presently has a reserve list for the next shipment that is due to arrive next week with a bigger order coming to the island in June. "The diabolo trend started last year when it was a popular Christmas toy. Stocks all over the world were sold out and we couldn't get any for Bahrain.
"Now, whenever we manage to get a shipment on the island we can barely hold the stock because of high demand across the board, be it expatriate children or Bahraini.
"Diabolo tricks are an important act in the world famous Cirque de Soleil where the performers manipulate the diabolo and stage marvellous tricks with it," said Wafa Abdul Hameed, senior sales person at Carousel.
LuLu Hypermarket in Dana Mall had a small supply of plastic diabolos in March that they were selling for a mere 500fils. "We have customers inquiring about diabolo and we are receiving our next order this month," said Johnny CP, supervisor at the toy section.
Surprisingly, the international brand toy shop on the island, Toys R Us in Seef district has no supplies of diabolos to date. According to Muhammed Ismail, store manager at Toys R Us, the demand is quite localised.
"We are getting a lot of queries about diabolos and have conveyed customer interest to our buying department in Dubai but they don't buy exclusively for Bahraini market but for the entire GCC stores," he explained.
Apart from the joy of possessing the latest toy, flipping the diabolo is a great opportunity for children to stand out from the crowd and show their peers how deft they are at countless diabolo tricks.
From the Grind to Chinese Whip, Elevator, Butterfly, Suicide, Dark Side, Up the Hill, performing tricks on the juggling spool takes concentration, patience and, of course, hours of practice. Children are normally seen manipulating the diabolo at a frenetic pace building one trick into another sometimes using part of their bodies to do complicated tricks.
Most adults see the revival of diabolo as a pleasant diversion from the electronically super-charged 21st Century devices touted as the cool toys for the younger generation.
"I played with the diabolo when I was little and was encouraged to use it as it developed eye and hand co-ordination," said school teacher Haoling Lewis, 38, who is of Chinese origin and has been living in Bahrain for three years.
"Skipping and playing with the diabolo were popular winter games when I was growing up in China. My diabolo was made of bamboo and made a whistling sound when spun.
"We used to compete at who could make the loudest sound with it," remembers Haoling. Now, Haoling's children, Tim, seven, and Viviene, four, both play with the diabolo especially since the juggling prop became trendy in Bahrain. "Unfortunately Tim had it last summer but left it in China. This year I ordered two diabolos online for both of them," she added.
When Anne-Laure Renard, 35, from Belgium saw children on her compound in Janabiyah playing with diabolos she remembered photographs of her grandfather - in her parents' old family album - playing with the juggling prop.
Bahraini Ahmed Muhammad, nine, is so fascinated with his new diversion that he told his mother Huda that he would rather practice his diabolo tricks than play on his playstation.
History of Diabolo
Diabolo's evolved from the Chinese yo yo where according to historians it has been played for more than 4,000 years. In China, the first diabolos were made of bamboo, like they are today in modern day China, with openings in the side making it whistle while spinning.
French and English missionaries introduced the spinning contraption to Europe in the late 18th century.
As the trend for the game caught on in Europe, a French inventor Gustave Pillipart in 1906 improved on the contraption's mechanics by making it with two metal cups with the edges protected by rubber hence creating the modern day diabolo.
The most basic act of diabolo manipulation is to cause the spool to spin whilst suspended from the string.
