Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from "Mike Lyle" contains
these
words:

Very interesting: I have never actually seen one, and was told
about
them by French friends in about 1970. I, like them, assumed they
were
a French thing. There's a French site which says they appeared in
the
'60s after being introduced by a manufacturer of plastic curtains:

http://www.webzinemaker.com/admi/m14...br=3&id=152839
so I suppose they must have crossed the Channel from Britain after
the craze Janet was involved in, and the curtain-maker took the
credit.

The French friends said that at the height of the craze some
electrical shops actually ran out of connecting wire.

I'm pretty sure the scoobidoo technique is much older than the
50's. It's somewhat like making corn-dollies (that was another
school craze, several years later). Those ornamental woven-stalk
techniques for making wrist and head bands, belts etc go back
centuries in many different cultures.

Certainly: quite apart from corn dollies, there are hundreds of
ornamental knots and plaits, many of which must have been around for
centuries or millennia (see _Ashley Book of Knots_, for example). I
was thinking only of the name "scoubidou" and the thing's occurrence
as a children's craze.

--
Mike.