From sidewalk to stores

What's in a name? When a toy manufacturer can pique a consumer's interest with a catchy moniker, you know they're onto something good.

Case in point, just uttering the name 'Skelly' recently resulted in the unthinkable: a NYC taxi driver slammed on his brakes.

"Yeah! Yeah, I know that game!" the cabbie exclaimed, reeling to face his passenger with a fire in his eyes.

"I played it the whole time I was growing up," he tells this reporter. "We called it 'Skullsies' on the Lower East Side, where I grew up, but up in the 40s, the Westies called it Skelly, or Skellsies, I think."

Clearly impassioned by his childhood recollection, the cabbie began drawing a diagram of the game. He explained how kids made their own game pieces from wax-filled bottle caps, sometimes weighted with pennies and scraped smooth on the sidewalk for speed.

Variations on this drama play out almost anywhere or time Skelly's name is mentioned. While the game's origin is generally conceded to be on the streets of New York, dating back to perhaps 80 or more years ago, it has been exported to other cities, like Chicago and Philadelphia, across the country.

It still boggles the mind of 43-year old Darryl Jones 17 years after he started thinking about ways to move it off the streets and into living rooms. He had begun playing the game in Brooklyn (later in the Bronx) at around 7 or 8 years old. "Before that, we had to stay on the sidewalks, but it was rough there and we'd always scrape our fingers on the concrete," he recalls. "A lot of the younger kids would wear Band-Aids to protect their fingers when shooting their tops."

Jones played regularly until he was about 19 and then rediscovered Skelly at age 26. "There was a guy honking his horn and these kids just wouldn't move," he chuckles. "They just stood there until they were done shooting their caps...That's when I said to myself there's got to be a way to make a smaller version and bring it onto a board."

Today, with partner Kevin Davis, he continues his quest to find a manufacturer to bring his vision to market. (At press time, the duo was speculating possibilities with a manufacturer in China.)

Jones' company goes by the name of Skelly Vision International for which he has developed multiple, smaller variations of the game that bring it indoors for use during any season—and in venues much smaller than New York City streets, schoolyards or playgrounds. Among these are Air Skelly, with disk-like pieces that speed across a bed of air, and Objectional Skelly, a board game version featuring tiny bumpers in front of the numbered boxes.

Since then, it's been a part-time business for Jones, but still a full-time obsession. As an approved vendor for the New York Board of Education, Jones has been filling orders from NYC teachers, as well as the NYC Parks Department and a number of local community and youth groups. He's partnered with Davis to get the word out to the toy industry, in addition to consumers.

And to further broaden its scope, Skelly Vision has participated in a number of tournaments and community-based events, some aimed specifically at getting kids more active again. To date, in New York City, they've participated in programs with the 135th Street YMCA, an event in Kips Bay and an after-school initiative in Crown Heights.

"You know, it's so easy for kids to become [wrapped up] in their video or electronic games," says Davis. This game gets them up and moving again, he contends.

"Skelly actually calls to the kids," Jones adds. "Every kid craves this game [all year long]. That's what makes Skelly such a sellable product. Adults remember it and it passes through the parents, all the way to the kids."