I’ve been playing one for the past week about, and I’ve got some more solidified impressions of the Blumi. Sorry for the wall of text, hopefully this is at least interesting and gives you an idea of what to expect from the upcoming run. I think pretty much everybody already posting in this thread will be extremely pleased with it.
A lot of organic and adjacent yoyos for the past few years at least have wanted to reference old designs while updating them in ways that make them considerably different from the originals. Very common is the CLYW Canvas styled response bumps into large schmoove grooves (seen on the Parlay, Asora, Dahlia and countless other modern designs). This wall style creates a very modern feeling yoyo that’s distinct from the organics of the mid 00s. The sheer ease of play offered by this design choice is unquestionable however, but it does create something that feels circa ~2011 at the oldest. Recently we’ve seen more designs eschew having a response bump entirely for a wall that tapers off the response very quickly (seen on the Panorama, Slappa, Krapfen, etc.) That quick taper style of wall feels entirely modern to me, it doesn’t quite offer the ease of play from the Canvas-style response, but you feel a lot more direct string contact against the yoyo which makes them feel much closer to the organics of the 00s.
This leads into the Blumi, the wall does taper off the response instead of being vertical, but it does this at a steep enough angle to really let you feel the string contact against the yoyo. You feel like you still have a ton of plane control always, and rejections especially feel incredibly snappy. ILYY had already implemented this style of response wall well into the past, as seen on my 2wei. So this isn’t just a modern design choice. It is considerably easier to play than an Air Rider or YWET or Josy-Ann, but it retains a level of control so close the difference feels placebo.
At least in my mind half of yoyo nostalgia for older designs is in design choices that have your string interacting with the body of the yoyo more, making things generally harder to do, rather than what they make easier. Difficulty isn’t entirely the point though, it’ can be one aspect, but the feeling of plane control and immediate sensation of having direct contact with the yoyo against your string is huge. And right now I can’t really think of any other yoyos of the past ~5 years that offer you a similar experience to the Blumi. The Freehand One AL is the closest you’re going to get. All of the other designs want to prioritize ease of play over control and feeling of string contact with the body of the yoyo.
The other specific aspect of the Blumi I think is worth touching on is its specific feeling in play. A lot of modern yoyos very much want to try and maximize the amount of weight in the rims, but that creates a slightly heavier and more aggressive and lean feeling in play that’s hard to elaborate in a concrete manner. So this is where I’m going to get very subjective with some vague jargon. Yoyos of the 00s however were a lot less optimized for sheer efficiency of weight to performance ratio, and their relatively lower percentage of weight concentrated near the outer diameter of rotation creates what I interpret as a slightly lighter but fattier/sluggish feeling in play. The Blumi feels closer to the yoyos of the 00s that had a bit more weight in the walls and hub. It’s a little bit fattier, it feels like a yoyo you want to play at a lower speed, it doesn’t feel immediately powerful and aggressive on the throw. I think it’d be easy to interpret this as a worse characteristic, but it’s not. It’s just different, and the low overall weight of the Blumi gives it this feeling similar to older designs, but in a way that ends up feeling more pleasant to play. A good comparison would be if you’ve played both a Panorama and a Diorama. While the Diorama on paper is lighter, the more efficient weight to performance oriented distribution of mass within the body of the yoyo leads the Diorama to feel a bit heavier and more lean and aggressive. The Blumi skews to the Panorama side of this equation.
Pictured with my Blumi are other yoyos I’ve been throwing around that I think could potentially be compared within the genre as the Blumi, but occupy completely different niches. The Asora and Krapfen both feel considerably different in play. Both the Asora and Krapfen feel leaner and just a bit more powerful, but the Blumi feels a lot softer on the throw and in play with a significantly increased level of control. The Blumi feels closer to the 2wei, but the 2wei is unquestionably a scaled up e1ns. The Blumi feels more adjacent to the Freehand, the Blumi is in the same lane as the Air Rider and YWET.
The best way to summarize the Blumi in my mind is it’s the best yoyo of the late 00s that time forgot. It’s a brand new release in 2009 that was created with modern yoyo machining and design knowledge. It doesn’t time leap with a completely different feel in string contact and control, it just feels like the modern design knowledge was used to create an exceptionally refined yoyo.
This yoyo should hit all the right notes for people who either have nostalgia for this era of designs, or people wanting something that feels considerably different from basically everything else on the market right now.
I spent probably too long writing all of that, but yeah I like this yoyo. It spins good, feels good in play, and hits the same notes I got from playing a G&E2 and YWET or my old Josy-Ann… but it’s just nicer by proxy of being less effort to maintain and more comfortable to play because of a lower overall weight while still retaining the same general feeling in play as old designs. As I said before, there’s just really not anything else you can get that exists within this niche right now. The market for modern organics is a bit saturated, but somehow the niche the Blumi exists within just isn’t a place other modern organics have wanted to position themselves in.
