In 1992, the fourth annual Rubber Ducky Regatta, a fundraiser for the Pulaski-Saline Unit of the American Cancer Society, launched about 6,000 bathtub toys on the Arkansas River.
A dumptruck tipped its cargo off the side of the Broadway Bridge and, after a billow of baby powder, the bathtub toys were off, bobbing toward the finish line downstream behind the Excelsior Hotel.
But the five-minute regatta lasted significantly longer the year it originated, 1989. The Arkansas was running fast that year as volunteers sponsored by KKYK-FM dumped about 3,100 yellow duckies from the Broadway Bridge. Each duck bore the name of a $5 donor.
The duckies raced 225 yards downstream to a rope strung over part of the river, where they were supposed to encounter a boom with a sort of funnel that would corral them into a finishing order. The donor of the first duck was going to win an expense-paid trip for two to Orlando, Fla. But it was storming 15 minutes before the regatta started.
Fast river current sank that boom. Boatloads of volunteers on hand to scoop escapees into hand nets instead scooped up flotillas.
Still, the event raised more than $15,000. And the rain didn't stop an estimated 1,500 people from showing up to watch.
Someone in a Howard the Duck suit and another, generic, duck mascot worked the crowd to drum up interest in duck-dance contests. The big ducks coerced Diane Self of Jacksonville to do the chicken dance (KFC was also a sponsor). Self and 10 people stood before a crowd — and her two teenagers — and gamely flapped her arms and legs. But she was outflapped by a man who imitated a rooster. He won an umbrella.
The next year, organizers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found a way to manage the current, and the 5-minute regatta became an annual fundraiser. Duck regattas raised as much as $30,000 a year for the cancer society. But blocking the river came at a price. For example, in 1992 when these photos were shot, the regatta delayed a barge by 45 minutes.
In 1994, the event moved inland to Wild River Country, a water park, and benefited other nonprofits, including Arkansas Children's Hospital and Camp Aldersgate.
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Some of 6,000 yellow bathtub toys that were dumped into the Arkansas River from the top of the Broadway Bridge float east toward the finish line during the American Cancer Society's fundraising Rubber Ducky Regatta on the evening of July 18, 1992. (Democrat-Gazette file photo/Staton Breidenthal)
Gallery: Rubber duckies of yore
