Buck buck (also known as "Johnny on a Pony") is a game with several variants.[1] One version of the game is played when "one player climbs another’s back" and the climber guesses "the number of certain objects out of sight."[1] Another version of the game is played with "one group of players [climbing] on the backs of a second group in order to build as large a pile as possible or to cause the supporting players to collapse."[1]
As early as the 1600s, children in Europe and the Near East played Buck, Buck, which had been called "Bucca Bucca quot sunt hic?".[2][3]
Bill Cosby's 1967 album Revenge includes a track "Buck, Buck" in which he describes playing the game as a child. He mentions that in his hometown of Philadelphia it was called "Buck Buck," while in New York City it was known as "Johnny on the Pony." This track introduces Fat Albert, "the baddest Buck Buck breaker in the world," who "weighed 2,000 pounds" and was the basis for the hit cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. The same story, in a slightly different form, is also included in Cosby's book Childhood.
Pieter Bruegel's painting "Children's Games" (1560) depicts children playing a variant of the game.[4][5]