Not really sure if this is the proper place to put this thread but oh well.
So, I headed on over to the local Family Dollar store and happened to see a couple “YoYo” brand yoyos that touted themselves as “Pro Level, Performance Enhanced” yadda yadda, the “Fast Eddy Looper” and “Fast Eddy Shooter”. Went on line and found people had good things to say about them. They are plastic yoyos with a fixed wooden axle. They were being sold for $3, I looked at some old yoyo websites and saw they had previously been sold for $10 but I suppose are outdated by now.
When I opened up the package, however, the sides were loose on the axle. Being fixed axle, you can’t unscrew them or anything. I ended up returning 3 yoyos out of 4, with the 4th orange Shooter being only the tiniest bit loose and still usable. The defect caused them to be very unresponsive which is no good for a looper.
Now, I’m kind of regretting returning the black yoyo because I really liked the color and would like to have 2 equal and different-colored loopers to learn 2-hand looping. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I feel embarrassed to go back to the store a third time, and they wouldn’t put the one I wanted back out anyway, plus I’m nowhere near being ready for two-hand stuff.
Rambling done… Assuming I had kept the defective yoyos, would it have been effective to drop some glue in there somehow to fix the looseness? Has anybody run into this problem before? It kind of makes me sad that a yoyo that was good once upon a time is now being manufactured so poorly
My halves got loose eventually also. I’d like to know if someone has a repair technique. Although I think I turfed my Fast Eddy.
Not quite as nice-looking, but the Red Devils (made in South Africa) have the same shape and are great steel fixed-axle loopers. Well… “great”… I don’t know enough about looping to actually make that judgment. But I like them and they seem sturdy.
All the fast eddy’s I ever had either got loose or came loose. Been so many years now I don’t remember if that stopped me from playing them or not.
Maybe try some thicker cotton string and see how they play.
Well I guess I’ll have to look forward to the one Shooter that I kept coming loose someday, haha. It already has lost a lot of responsiveness after playing it for a bit and the string thinning out. I’ll have to try a thick string sometime and see if that helps. For now I’m double-looping it. Thanks for the responses.
[s]Edit: ah! I just realized why it’s not responding well, haha. I guess double-looping was a bad idea as now the axle is spinning with the string, lol. I guess it was too much strain. Not a fixed-axle yoyo anymore
The sides are still stable, though.[/s]
Edit: Scratch that, it was just a trick of the light. Still fixed.
I managed to procure three Fast Eddys… The first one, the halves were loose straight out the package. The second one seemed fine on opening, but the halves started loosening after just 10mins of play. I still have one left unopened. I’m keeping it that way for now lest I have to bin it along with the other two… I was not impressed at all with the quality.
The Red Devils Greg mentions are fantastic starter loopers. Probably the best starters I’ve come across. The steel axles don’t give much sleep time though, so they’re almost worthless unless you want to get them specifically for looping. They can also take a serious beating and are virtually unbreakable. Probably not much point seeking them out though - your shipping costs alone will make them astronomically expensive.
