Straight from Sheldon Brown's site:
Kickback hub
A two speed coaster brake hub, which switches between its two gears each time the brake is applied. The advantage of this system is that it doesn't require any hand controls or cables. They were formerly made by Bendix and Sachs, and were popular on folding bicycles and inexpensive tandems, but are not currently in production.
Bendix (U.S. company) made 3 models, distinguished by colored stripes running around middle of the hub shell.
* The "blue band" model offered direct drive plus a higher gear.
* The "yellow band" and "red band" flavors offered direct drive plus a lower gear. The difference between the yellow and red models is in the brake. The red band had a disc-type brake, like the old New Departure coaster brakes, while the yellow band used a pair of brass shoes pressing against the inside of the shell, as with newer Bendix and other "modern" coaster brakes.
Note that the sprockets are not interchangeable on these hubs, they only took a 20 tooth sprocket.
Sachs/Torpedo (West Germany) also used to make a kick-back hub. These are most commonly found on folding/take-apart bikes, where they offer the advantage of not requiring any cables to run from the front to the rear of the bike.
The Sachs/Torpedo hub, unlike the Bendix, did allow sprocket interchangeability, using the same 3-splined sprockets used by most other multispeed hubs (Sturmey-Archer, Shimano SRAM/Sachs, etc.) These are available from 13-24 teeth. The Sachs/Torpedo unit is also quite a lot smaller than the Bendix models.