Last weekend I was invited to a good friends wedding in southern MA., specifically Fall River. Now Fall River is known for a lot of things… It likes to consider itself a “tough” city, it has the largest collection of WWII battleships, a very large Portuguese community, and is the birthplace of Lizzy Borden and Emeril Lagasse. Less known to anyone outside our little community is that Fall River is also the home of the Yomega Yo-yo company. Yes, “The Scholarship City” is also “Yomega Yo-yo City”.
So, being the optimistic Yo-player that I am I took my family to the factory hoping that they would allow us a little tour of the factory.
No dice.
When you walk into the front hall of the Yomega factory there is a glass door in front of you with a big pin-pad lock on it and a small sliding window to the right that says “Yomega” on it. When you ring the doorbell a man pops his head out of the slide window (not unlike the door guard from the Wizard of Oz) who proceeded to tell me that they do not give tours due to insurance liabilities and no, I cannot see the Wizard.
He did offer me a catalogue of what they sell and said that as long as they had it on hand they could sell it to me sans shipping charges. I declined his offer of a catalogue due to the fact that I frequent many of the major manufacturers website often. I already knew exactly what to ask for; the extremely hard to get your hands on “Ooch Smoov”.
The Smoov is one of the collaborations Yomega has done with the small Rhode Island yo-yo company Rhody-O and is the long anticipated signature series of the boisterous and family friendly spokesperson of Yomega- Ooch. Ooch can be seen on the Yomega website, the online tutorials, and all over the instructional DVDs that Yomega packs in with their more “professional” styles of throws such as the Hot Shot, Exodus II, Maverick, and Dash. He’s been on international television and has done countless personal appearances in places like fairs and school gymnasiums. Imagine a motivational speaker with yo-yo’s and you have the Ooch.
Out of the box the Smoov looks very reminiscent of the Yomega Dash in both size and shape however that is where the similarities end.
Stock, this little guy is as responsive as they come. Seriously- I threw a trapeze and sneezed and the thing snapped into my hand with a smack that made me cry out an exclamatory not fit for my children to have heard. I also have the Maverick and an Exodus II and neither of those were as responsive as the Smoov. Luckily I brought my “Yo-yo first aid kit” and thin-lubed it up ASAP. I prefer this to a “clean” bearing simply because of my personal play style.
Well, once the thin lube cut through all the thick slowness it spun fast and long, for a Yomega anyway. I’ve gotten a personal minute-and-a-half sleep out of it with the stock bearing, thin lubed. I can imagine with a clean or ceramic bearing it would probably do quite a bit more.
The Smoov has a black rubber response pads made by 3M on both halves of the yo-yo, a “C” size bearing with a fairly deep seat for keeping the gunk out. It weighs in at a hefty-for-it’s-size 64 grams, it’s height is a hair over 2" and it’s width just under 1.5". It’s a meaty undersized throw with an orange “anno” finish and a bit of a bite to it. I’m not a grinder for the most part but it climbs up my arm pretty darn fast and IRG’s are tricky for my stubby thumbs. Do able but not a strength.
The Smoov handles three or four sections of string without any major issues as long as you don’t stay there too long, and the small stature of the throw makes moving in and out of strings fairly easy. I haven’t had an issue with whips, but hopping the yo-yo was tricky for me at first because the small size and weight made it feel and play heavier than it is. I did, however, get used to it and tweaked my play style to match the Smoov’s needs. With my play style I prefer a “floaty” feel to my throws but I adapted to this one pretty quickly.
So I ran through my bag of tricks and found it an over-all comfy throw with one major hang-up; This sucker loves to roll over. I don’t know if it’s the weight placement or the shape of the throw or just that its so heavy for a small guy but it rolls over more than an over-zealous “Winchester Dog Show” finalist. I find I can’t take advantage of it’s longer spin time and have to cut my runs short or it just rolls and falls off the strings too quickly for me to correct. I am always turning in a not-so-slow circle to try and keep the throw where I want it.
Other than that personality quirk I find that the more I throw it the more I like it. Honestly when I first got it I was seriously considering unloading it as soon as I could and cut my losses. Now, after a week or so of playing with it I have decided I am very happy to have the Yomega flag-ship as a part of my growing collection.
Every yo-yo has it’s own personality, just like every yo-player. You just need to find the ones that have a personality compatible with yours.
Sensei Dave
11-09-2010
Thanks for the kind words!