Rainbow Loom was created by Cheong Choon Ng, a
Malaysian immigrant of
Chinese descent who came to the United States in 1991 to attend
Wichita State University, where he earned a graduate degree in
mechanical engineering. The bracelets became popular with the neighborhood children, and his daughter suggested that he sell them. He spent six months developing the loom kit and designed 28 versions. used a wooden board, pegs, and dental hooks. Ng decided to rename his product after discovering that an elastic hair band on the market was named
Twist Band, and his brother and niece came up with the name Rainbow Loom. Efforts to sell the loom online and in toy stores, however, were unsuccessful because customers did not understand how to use the product. In April 2014, Ng released a travel-sized version of the Rainbow Loom called the Monster Tail, which allows simple bracelets to be made on only eight pegs, arranged in a rectangle. In mid-May 2015, Rainbow Loom released two new products: The Alpha Loom, another travel-sized loom that can be used to make vibrantly colored name bracelets with special types of new bands, which are twice as thick but half the size of regular bands. It has seven pegs on either side, and it comes with a special hook that has seven hooks on so users can hook over seven bands at once, instead of one. It also comes with an instruction manual with pixelated grids for users to photocopy, cut out, measure around the wrist, and design the patterns themselves, with pictures and letters to spell words. The Hair Loom Studio, also released in May 2015, is used to make designs on the Rainbow Loom, Finger Loom, or Monster Tail, which can then be transferred onto the user's hair by pushing the design off a "guide tube" onto a long strand of hair. The bands for this are made of silicone and can be removed without pulling at the hair. There are two versions of the Hair Loom Studio, a large "double" and a small "single" loom. ==Reception==