While I was at the World Yo-Yo Contest Dale Oliver showed me a picture of him doing offstring on stage at the The 4 - 4 Bandai Yo-Yo Festival in Japan - April 4th, 1998!
This photo was just mind blowing to me. He is on stage in front of such a HUGE crowd doing an offstring move behind his back! I’m not sure if this is the earliest offstring photo - but it just might be! Wild!
That’s really cool!
It’s mind blowing to me too. I don’t think I’ve seen a color photo of him with hair before😂
The Yo looks super slim too, Did you happen to catch what it was, @AndreBoulay?
It’s a Spintastic Terminator
Very cool!
30,000 attendees is CRAZY, and behind the back offstring tricks in 1998 is absolutely nuts
Dang that’s awesome. That’s a tiny offstring yoyo haha. Any idea what yoyo that is? I wonder if that’s the record for most people at a yoyo event?
Great photo! Did he say if he landed the trick?
Love his glasses case on his belt and just look at the kids in front…. they are in awe.
Fire!
I had the pleasure of meeting Dale in Cleveland, and he was an amazing person! This is a super-unique photo and I’m glad you found it.
Wow that’s super cool, I love his face lmao
I’m in awe too! Amazing.
Yeah - as mentioned earlier - it was a Spintastics Terminator (Spintastics was Dale’s company originally out of Texas). And Terminator was a short lived name for legal reasons. 
It was renamed to the Technic.
Added context of the history of offstring referencing Dale in this photo originally written by Dave Schulte in 1999 for the Yo-Yo World Magazine Issue 4 that never saw the light of day!
The ‘quick summary’ of it is this:
Offstring yo-yoing traces its roots back to 1958, when Duncan introduced its first wooden Butterfly yo-yo. Visionaries like Wayne Lundberg, Ken Filary, and Dale Oliver began experimenting with off-string techniques in the late ‘50s, laying the groundwork for what would become a revolutionary style. Although it wasn’t widely promoted at the time, the 1990s saw a resurgence in off-string play thanks to innovators like Jon Gates and John Higby. With the introduction of the Henry’s Viper yo-yo, complex tricks became safer and more accessible, propelling the style forward. Their dedication, combined with inspiring demonstrations in Japan, fueled the global growth of off-string yo-yoing, paving the way for a new generation of players and establishing it as a dynamic and evolving discipline within the yo-yo community.
The longer text you can read here! Even I learned something!
The Past and Future of Off-String Yo-Yo Play
By: Dave SchulteAlthough off-string yo-yo play seems to have burst onto the yo-yo scene lately, it has actually been around for quite a while. In one basic form or another, it has been around since 1958 when Duncan released its first wooden butterfly yo-yo. According to Dale Oliver, a former Duncan demonstrator, the demonstrators of that time would challenge each other by taking yo-yoing a step further…off the string. One of the first such attempts was with Wayne Lundberg, the inventor of the butterfly yo-yo, Ken Filary, and Dale. They would attempt to play catch off-string, throwing the yo-yo back and forth. He said that the few maneuvers they did were never promoted or demonstrated in public. It was just a challenge between the crew, it was never meant to sell more yo-yos or encourage a new craze.
Little did the demonstrators of the late 50’s know that they were developing a style that would make such an impact on yo-yos in the late 90’s. The recent resurgence can be traced back to 1990, in Tucson, Arizona. Dale Oliver showed a small group of people the few off-string maneuvers that he and other demonstrators from the 50’s did. At the time, he was using an original Pro Yo. (I saw a similar demo from Dale in 1997 using a Viper. The ball bearing is a major advancement in off-string play, it allows much more intricate tricks on one throw.) Among the people in the group at Tucson, one person was particularly interested, his name was Jon Gates. Jon is one of the people responsible for the push in off-string, as well as some of the tricks that have been developed. Jon is a very creative yo-yo player, and when he started working with the limitless parameters of off-string, he really shined. The first yo-yo he tried off-string with was an old Playmaxx Premier Monarch (butterfly shape). He said it worked OK, but many of his yo-yos were broken because of the nature of off-string practice…the yo-yo hits the ground, not to mention everything else in the room. The advent of the soft rubber Henry’s Viper yo-yo has really changed that. It is much safer to attempt to learn off-string as well as develop more difficult tricks. I have been with Jon on a number of occasions when we would look at maneuvers that are thought not possible, and then we would make it happen. When Jon and I first started, I never thought we could perform a throwdown on one throw, and then off-string tricks on the next throw. Or be able to perform regeneration for minutes on end without a catch. Regeneration is definitely the future of off-string play, it is exciting to watch, and challenging to perform. During a phone interview with Jon, he said that most of the tricks he knows are due to a collaboration with John Higby. Together, they would experiment, develop, and bounce trick ideas off each other during hours of fun practice time. They drove each other to excel, and had fun at the same time.
Jon and I have been sent to Japan on separate tours called Team Hyper Viper (THV) tours. These tours were to promote the Henry’s Hyper Viper. We went with different teams to demonstrate all tricks, but Jon and I concentrated mostly on off-string. The tricks we demonstrated were discussed and shown in the Coro Coro Comic books. These comic books are widely circulated in Japan and were a great help in promoting off-string play with the Hyper Viper. My tour was all across southern Japan, with the two big days being held in the Osaka and Fukuoka Domes with thousands of people on hand to watch. On the other days, I was at major stores demonstrating and teaching off-string. Jon was all over, but spent a majority of his time in and around Tokyo. He was also at one of the major national events where tens of thousands of people came. We both agree that the best part of touring is meeting all of the kids that are into yo-yos. I was on my tour to Japan when off-string yo-yoing was a relatively new concept to them. I was able to teach many of the kids some basic and advanced moves. Some of the kids even talked about Jon and the tricks he taught them. It is so great to see the impact of the work that demonstrators have done around the world. Dale Oliver has also done off-string in Japan using a Tigershark. He was even pictured on the front page of the Tokyo newspaper before the famous 4/4 event doing a behind-the-back trapeze catch. When speaking with Jon and Dale, we were all amazed at the level of play that off-string has achieved around the world. Our work in Japan inspired a group of people to form “Team Off-Strings.” (a Japanese team dedicated to the advancement of off-string yo-yo play) These kids are amazing, they took the basics that all the off-string demonstrators had shown them, and took it to new levels. A quote I remember from my school teaching days said, “It is a teacher’s goal, and best reward, to see the student surpass the teacher.” In this case, I think we have all succeeded. In the 1998 US Nationals in Chico, Sky Kiyabu was the first person to put a significant amount of off-string play in his freestyle. He won first place in the A division by using great stage presence, innovative tricks, and ending his routine with some off-string maneuvers using a Viper. Hironori Mii also used multiple Vipers to take second place in the A division at the 1999 World Yo-Yo Championships in Hawaii. His freestyle was totally off-string, and it amazed the audience. A technical error on the music cut his time a little short or who knows, he may have been able to capture first place. Before anyone knew the results of the contest, he was offered the opportunity to freestyle again with the correct amount of time, but being the sportsman he is, he let it stand. At the 1999 US Nationals in Chico, an experimental division put off-string as a compulsory trick. This division, which showcased the cutting edge of yo-yo play and was extremely difficult, was called the X-Division. Unfortunately, the contestants had to choose between the X-division and the other traditional divisions and the X-division did not attract enough players to run the contest. Perhaps in the future, the X-division tricks will be fused with the traditional tricks, then off-string will be required of the single A National Champion. Hironori Mii attended the US Nationals, but because he is not a US citizen, he was unable to compete. But that did not prevent him from putting on an exciting off-string demo for the crowd. It was fantastic. He is truly pushing the limits of off-string to new heights.
With the advent of the Henry’s Viper yo-yo, off-string yo-yo play is enjoying a major resurgence in the United States and around the world. The soft body and wide gap allow the player to safely attempt mind-blowing maneuvers…all off-string. Many trick names and maneuvers are similar to normal yo-yo play, like brain twister, man on the trapeze, rock the baby, etc… but with the added dimension of diablo-style tricks like suicide, whip catch, etc. The tricks that a beginner can do, however basic, have an added element of difficulty, challenge, and fun. We sure have come a long way since Duncan introduced a wooden butterfly yo-yo in 1958. They were not even thinking about yo-yoing off-string, and today it is not only thought about, it is a passion. The only thing left for you to do is try it.
Getting Started
A few tips to help you save time and get the basics when learning to do off-string tricks:
Get a butterfly shape yo-yo. I prefer the Viper due to the soft body, wide gap, and long spin, but any butterfly yo-yo will do (Bearings will make it a lot easier).
Find an open area with no breakable objects nearby.
Basic winding of the off-string yo-yo: First, attach the slip knot to your finger as you normally would. Next, place and hold the loose end of the string in the gap of the yo-yo (do not open the string end) and wind the string around it until it grabs and wraps up to your hand.
Note: The forward pass mount is the most basic. The yo-yo will be spinning toward you when it is thrown.
Stand with your back to the wall, it should be about 4 ft behind you. This will prevent the yo-yo from rolling very far away when practicing. Most people give up because they get sick of chasing the yo-yo after they miss the string catch.
Throw the yo-yo out forward and up, like the first throw of shoot the moon. Using your non-yo-yo hand’s first finger, catch the string as it goes up and before the yo-yo leaves the string. This will cause the yo-yo to go up and slightly back toward you. This is tough at first, but keep practicing.
Note: Some people prefer to throw it exactly like a forward pass, but the yo-yo tends to go straight out and not up or back, so it is hard to catch it on the string. It is best to point the yo-yo more up on the first throw.
Once the yo-yo has left the string, keep the string in both hands and attempt to align the groove up
Dude, this is awesome! Thank you for sharing this, It’s good to see more documented history.
@AndreBoulay - Mind if I post this to the Archive, and credit you for digging it up?
(and of course Dave S for the original article)
“Attendance was over 30,000”
No need for credit to me - there was a PDF someone else uploaded to the yoyowiki for the larger text!
For those that haven’t seen it too - Hironori Mii’s routine from 1999. Dave mentions in the article how they cut his freestyle short from the full 3 minutes and how if they hadn’t its ‘possible’ he could have won! Another fact I hadn’t known about.
Really crazy to see how far ahead of his time Hironori was with offstring on stage in 1999!
