Culbuto

A culbuto is a type of Jouet S for children marketed by the company Hasbro since 1971. It is about a toy of the form and size of a egg of hen, out of decorated plastic, representing a character. The base of egg, round, is ballasted so that the toy, posed on the ground in any position, will always return in driving position while oscillating. This characteristic is at the origin of the name of the mark used for these toys in the anglophone countries: weeble , paronym of the verb to wobble which means to oscillate.

These toys could be accompanied by a whole of accessories: vehicles, maisonnettes, clothes.

Not very expensive and robust, these toys was a great success during their launching. Their principle is however not new, it acts of a model with reduced size of traditional Japanese headstocks in Papier chewed, the Okiagari-koboshi S.

After a stop of marketing, these toys in a close form are again proposed with the sale since the Années 2000.

Popular culture

As a synonym of “anybody who is always raised in spite of the blows which are carried to him”, the term of culbuto is sometimes applied to political personalities, like in the case of the title of the work of Marie-Eve Falklands and Carl Meeus, the Madonna and Culbuto in connection with Ségolène Royal and François Holland.
a disguise of culbuto appears in one of the albums of cartoon of André Franquin like one of the inventions of Gaston Lagaffe.

See too

Weebl and Bob, cartoon whose two main characters are culbutos.
Okiagari-koboshi, model of traditional headstock based on the same principle.
the Gömböc, similar object but without counterweight.

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