Several of these stories can be found online. Shortly after the start of the mass production, bans started to follow fast, due to the high number of "incidents" surrounding the paddles on cons. The post also said that the original yaoi paddle was invented in 2002/2003 by akicafe, and the rights of mass production have since been bought by hendane He liked the present so much, that he decided to mass produce them (to my dismay, without my final consent).
It was meant as a joke since he and I are friends and over 33% of his business relies on the sale of yaoi manga and doujinshi, and his business model includes yelling out catch phrases to passerbys in con dealer rooms (such as "geeeeet your red hot yaoi books right here!" and "hot boys in tight pants right here"). I originally made the first yaoi paddle, with woodburned letters and a high gloss acrylic finish for the owner of the company "hen da ne". It is said that this event happened at yaoi con, hence the interest of other people at the time, and the huge surge of requests for the yaoi paddles. The one receiving it was a yaoi manga/doujishin artist, which made quite a bit of his income this way. The original yaoi paddle was made as a prank between 2 friends. Following up on some stories I heard of yaoi fans I know from conventions, and a lot of trips on the WayBack machine to find old/deleted posts following the first ban, I came down to this pretty consistent story both online and among the fans.