Hong Kong toy tycoon Lam Leung-tim, creator of iconic rubber duck, dead at 105

Lam Leung-tim, the pioneering Hong Kong toy tycoon and creator of the city’s iconic yellow rubber duck, has died aged 105.

In newspaper ads that ran across the city on Saturday, Lam’s family revealed that he had died on November 10, and announced that a memorial ceremony would be held on Monday at Nanhai District Funeral Home in his ancestral hometown of Foshan.

Born in Hong Kong in 1924, Lam’s family fled to mainland China after Japan invaded the city during World War II. For several years, he worked as a farmer and sold vegetables in a village market.

After the war, Lam returned to Hong Kong, where he took a job at a newspaper and magazine stand, earning just HK$60 a month, before joining an industrial materials company owned by industrialist Norman Young Sze-kuen.

An avid reader, Lam stumbled across an article in a magazine about the use of plastics in toy production. He then convinced Young to focus on products using the material, and Winsome Plastic Works was opened shortly thereafter.

The first batch of yellow rubber ducks designed by Lam rolled off the assembly line in 1948. The rest was history.