Scenario: A yoyo company starts mass producing Motorized Yoyos. Everyone now can get one, cheap.
Question: Would you use it? Would it be “cheap”? Would competitions recognize it?
You might say that’s cheap… but on the other hand, what about advances in yoyoing? What about ball bearings? Didn’t they increase the spintime tenfold??
I don’t think that would catch on for multiple reasons. I think I like yoyoing partially to the fact that it uses no electric wiring (well, excluding a few) and I just don’t think the community would recognize them as “true” yoyos.
Ball Bearings opened up a great new style, but motorized? No.
well, ball bearing yoyos still require skill to get them to spin well. Any knucklehead could use a motorized yoyo…
Right… but wouldn’t trick become more complicated? Even with a eternal spinning yoyo… wouldn’t tricks still require skill? A long spin time would not make a beginner instantly be able to do tricks.
in the most general sense, I think of a yoyo for its ups and downs. a motor ruins this. instead of throwing it, you’re supposed to just flip a switch and it starts spinning? if yoyoing ever turns into this count me out…
not to go against you pat, but I think that a motorized throw would be good for us.
I mean, not just as a competiton tool, but a practice tool, I know that I like to practice some tricks with a dead yoyo, so why not a long spinning yoyo? I think that it would be a great improvement, but I’m jusst providing the other side of the argument
But why shouldn’t it be allowed in competitions? It will still take skill, except that sleepers aren’t part of that, and more difficult and streamlined tricks will be needed. Think of a 5 minute long combo!!! Can you do that right now? No. With a motor? Probably. Same with before ball bearings came into play. Literally.
I see where you’re coming from.
and it would take skill.
But it just doesnt feel right
That would be one hella vibey yoyo, ROFL.
Sure, you could practice tricks with it, but the thing about practicing tricks with a bearing yoyo is you also practice your throw. If you have a motorized yoyo you could do the worst possible throw and it would still spin forever. I would rather practice my throw and my tricks over practicing with a motorized yoyo.
I think it would be less the sport, and more the toy.
If it’s motorized… I wouldn’t and don’t want to call it a yoyo…
Motorized means less challenging…
Just the same if you change a golf ball with a ball that’s rocket powered…
How exactly would a motorized yoyo even work? It would have to have something to push against, which it doesn’t, so have fun figuring that out.
As for after figuring out whether it would be “cheating” or not…I would say that it would seem to be cheating at first, then it might catch on a little bit, and some people would use them, but most people would just stick with what they have.
PS: An eternally spinning yoyo is physically impossible.
not to mention how big they would need to be…
EDIT: say goodbye to unresponsive play. Since the axle would need to be fixed so the motor could keep it spinning, the moment you give it some slack it’s coming back up
I don’t think the issue is how it would work or if it would work, but would you use it?
I wouldn’t for a couple of reasons. First, we’ve gotten to the point where the yoyo can sleep as long as we need it to. A longer sleeping yoyo won’t improve our tricks. Also, there are some points in a freestyle when it just looks good to stop the yoyo and throw it again. I remember when that dude made a video of a freestyle on the Protostar with only one throw and to me it just looked unnatural. There are natural ending points to tricks.
Also even with his huge motorized yoyo it slept for half the time of the King Buddha 2 record which goes to show we can make do with what we have.
and what decides those? there were natural ending points to tricks before bearings were developed, too. what if a yo-yo trick could be as long as a symphony?
…
people are pretty funny. they’re absolutely prepared to accept yo-yoing as ‘natural’ in its current form, regardless of whether it would be interpreted the same way to past (or future) generations. what we do now, for the most part, wouldn’t even be recognizable as yo-yoing 30 or 40 years ago. players today are immensely (if not completely) dependent upon the technology that makes their yo-yo’s go. thirteen years ago, the phrase ‘any knucklehead can use a yo-yo with a bearing’ was a common refrain among people who wanted to maintain the stance that the only TRUE yo-yoing was with a fixed axle. our toys today not motorized, but from the perspective of one who’s grown up with wood yo-yo’s, they may as well be - and that’s not BAD; just a change.
no one can predict the technological innovations that will come to shape play in the future (that’s why they’ll be ‘innovations’). i find it kind of hypocritical to consider a yo-yo that spins on its own to be unnatural. it’s one thing to say ‘well, this is my time, and this is what yo-yoing is to me,’ and another to suggest that future generations will not be real yo-yoers if/when technology allows for another massive paradigm shift. yo-yoing is always moving; sometimes in tiny increments, sometimes by leaps and bounds. to stand on the shoulders of one set of technological developments, but deride the next step as ludicrous doesn’t hold up.
if ‘grandpa x’ watched you yo-yoing and said ‘pssh. THAT’S not real yo-yoing. using all that technology is CHEATING,’ you’d be ticked off. you’d be ticked off because, even though your bearing and metal-construction might make some things easier, you work just as hard as they did to move your yo-yoing forward. and yet some of you seem to espouse a stance that would say the same thing to a future kid using a hypothetical ‘self-propelled’ yo-yo.
our art changes. that’s why it’s art.
Motorized yo-yos -do- work… there have been a few versions over the years, none all that great… but functional sure.
Also, what Ed said.
Kyle
In my opinion, the way the trick looks and the way it flows.
Yes, but my point is, if there is a motorized yoyo, wouldn’t tricks be able to become more complex, greater combos, and more things to be done??? Wouldn’t it be possible to have a 1 hour combo? This would still flow nicely too.
Also, I’m talking about the theoretical possibility, and whether it would be used.
If I had posted this about ball bearings back during the fixed axle, many of you might have said the same thing, that spin time would be increased too much, that anyone could do the tricks.
BUT, with the invention of ball bearings, sure, it is a lot easier to do the “old” tricks, but then new tricks developed, ones that depended on ball bearings to do. For example, would you be able to do a ladder escape with the fixed axles? Unresponsive play tricks like grinds and popping tricks?
So theoretically, with the invention of motorized yoyos, new tricks would develop, more complicated and thus, furthering the art of yoyoing.
Also, I don’t think having an eternally long spinning yoyo would give anyone the skill to instantly do whips and complex tricks. If when you were learning, the yoyo never stopped spinning, I doubt you could have done those tricks instantly. It still takes skill to land the yoyo on the string.