Typology of Old German Spinning Tops (1935)

I used to do that as a kid, but I had completely forgotten how to do that. It's been a long time since I saw a spinning top; I guess kids these days don't play with them anymore.

If I remember correctly, our tops were blank wood as bought and we tended to paint them in our designs.

That is not as easy as it looks. My granparents had a number of tops like that (not German, but same style you threw it with a string)... none of the kids could get them to work, and (comically) none of the adults could get them to work either. Some child would find them during the holidays and some grandparent would say "oh yes I remember playing with those, you use a string" (goes and finds string, spends next 15 minutes proving they just can not do it). Then the kids would run off and spend an hour trying to get it to work, unsuccessfully.

I think when I see this video, we all were throwing it upside down.

Oh wow I get it now - this is the proto-yo-yo. When I was a teenager a toy called the "yoho diabolo" had its moment in the sun as the must-have of the day. Of course, diabolos are much older than that - "yoho" was presumably a brand that figured out how to sell them to first decade era teenagers. I wonder if these string tops come back into fashion like that periodically.