Smooth, creamy and fun. Say hello to the Butterball.
SPECS
Diameter 54.4mm
Width 46.5mm
Weight 64.4g
Material 6061 AL
The Butterball was designed, engineered, and tuned for pure fun.
Late last year, we looked into a repeat run of the Abel – a derivative of the Noah, one of our best selling organics to date. The Abel was a small-batch variant of the Noah that came without Side Effects, for those who wanted a simpler, more straightforward version that captured all of the Noah’s magic without the modularity or tinkering required. The Abel never got the time of day like the Noah did, even though it was lauded for its featherweight, sensitive play. We went through two great runs of the Abel, and then moved on to other projects.
Working on a possible third run of the Abel gave us a chance to make minor quality of life changes, on top of new colorways and the usual works – but one thing led to another, and getting carried away in long hours at the CAD desk, we emerged from design sessions with something quite different. The Butterball is the result of an incredibly fine focus on designing for feel.
Ever since the Tide, we’ve been thinking a lot about organic design, and the Butterball might be the most actualised version of all of those thoughts currently.
The most immediate departure from the Noah / Abel form factor is the removal of the schmoove-step – a feature that’s been found in every organic model we’ve designed, right since our first design in the Cloudberry, and most recently in the Tide. The schmoove-step brought multiple functional benefits to organic designs that typically lack stability and power; it allows designs like the Cloudberry, Thunderberry, and Stormberry to be surprisingly performant for their category without having to adopt extreme or awkward distributions of weight, and we’ve always liked our designs wide. Quite fairly, though, the schmoove-step departs from a purely traditional organic profile.
The Butterball takes from the Noah’s round, bubbly silhouette, and draws from our usual design features – such as a simple, unbroken curvature across nearly the entire design.
In terms of playfeel, we were hoping to merge the best characteristics of the Noah, Goji, Pomelo, and Cloudberry. It needed to feel like a fat, bouncy cloud on string, be well-paced and tuned in rhythmic play, and zip and dash when you wanted.
The distribution of mass here is different as well – there’s quite a bit more weight in the center and mid-zones. The magic happens usually where you don’t see it. While the Abel was incredibly lightweight and sensitive in play, the Butterball feels significantly more sure, and glides through tricks smoothly. The Butterball doesn’t feel flighty, in that sense – but still preserves great agility in directional-change play. Save for players who very specifically treasure an ultralight playfeel, the Butterball is – in our view – a significant upgrade to the Noah and Abel.
The Butterball comes in at 54.4mm in diameter, and 46.5mm in width, giving it a nice, fat, and comfortable profile. It clocks 64.4g in mass, so it feels light, but not sparse.
As its name suggests, the Butterball is just endlessly smooth.
The Butterball wasn’t made for competition or the modern meta; it’s not that kind of yoyo. But if you’ve enjoyed our takes on the organic genre, we have a feeling you’ll enjoy the Butterball too.
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The Butterball is equipped with premier kit in
Stratos Pads by Atmos
Type II Concave Bearings by Atmos
First Class XL String by Kitty
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We’d love to hear what you think! Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or in our DMs.