I feel like painted yo-yos have never really been much of a thing even back in the plastic era where it was easier to do (I guess because plastic is more tolerant of paints, can have end caps, and you can paint the ‘inside’ of a clear yoyo to see it on both sides), and even less so in the era of cheap metal yo-yos.
Just to highlight a few more, these are of course Higbys (as in hand decorated by the one and only John Higby) …
I guess it makes sense that painting never took off at scale (compared to anodization / splashes) as you can’t automate that, you can’t do a “run” of 100 painted yo-yos without kinda killing the artist in the process
You could do an automated laser engraving but that’s kinda monochrome-only which isn’t as nice.
Anyways! Do you have any cool painted yo-yos? Have you seen a super awesome painted yo-yo recently anywhere? Share pics!
I have just two. One is a Leviathan that was painted by the owner of Turning Point (or so I’m told).
The other one is a bit more special (to me, anyways). It was originally a 3rd run Wolf Lake Peak that was painted by Brett Grimes, who I believe named it the ‘Boo Peak’. I had always wanted to paint a yoyo as well as give my own take on the classic ‘Peak motif’. These are the results:
