The Op-Yop was a toy marketed in the 1960's by a company based in Royal Oak, Michigan called Kramer Designs. The company's original location was an office on Adams in the neighboring community of Birmingham. The history we could find was based on a Time Magazine article in 1968 where it was stated that a million of the Op-Yops had been sold and another million were expected to sell by Christmas. In my travels, I have found some additional information including an internal memo relating to some six months worth of advertising that was done on the Soupy Sales Show with Soupy doing the commercials shot in Detroit. There were also memo's to retailers advising them to stock up on the toy to be in sync with the Soupy Sales ads. I tracked down the original molder who made the parts and talked to some home workers who assembled them at their homes from 1967 through 1968. The toy was labeled as a psychedelic sensation and was skin packaged on 4-1/4 inch by 14 inch printed chipboard. More can be found out about the recent reincarnation of the op-yop at WWW.op-yop.com
Beguiled by promises of an easy way to publish poetry on-line and, later, with letters announcing that their poem is in the semi-finals of a poetry writing contest, poets from all parts of the world were scammed into giving money to The International Library of Poetry so that they can get a book with their poem on it, and more money to attend "poetry reading" conventions.