“Back in my day sonny we used to use YYR Draupnir’s and Dazzlers, non of this fancy new-fangled stuff.”
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Haha I wonder how much the yoyo world will change in 50 years. All the stuff we have now will be as ancient as fixed axle.
Excellent summary of the situation. While I agree that the MMC is more comfortable in the hand; I am less sure about some of the other generalizations.
Performance and “Play” (whatever that is…) are not mutually exclusive. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that I understand what “play” means, I am not clear as to why an American manufacturer cannot make a Bi-Metal yo-yo that has both superior performance and “play”.
Performance, to me, means that the yo-yo keeps its spin-characteristics longer than another yo-yo with the same feel on the string. In this regard, the Space Cowboy has superior performance to the Supernova. This performance does not compromise “play” in any way. What it does do is make learning tricks easier since you get more time per-throw to practice with. This is why performance seems to matter so little to professionals. They are not learning new tricks, and the ones they know were mostly learned with under-performing yo-yo’s these days. For those of us that are still learning to master the yo-yo, however, those few extra seconds can mean mastering how to land it much earlier.
So; back on-topic:
The future is better Bi-Metal yo-yo’s.
The future is years of experimentation and perfecting the Bi-Metal or Bi-Material designs. Much as the design of the single-metal yo-yo has evolved from the 888 to the Sleipnir; so will the design characteristics of Bi-Metal yo-yo’s converge over time. For now, the market is wide-open.
Where will the rings be? Outside? Inside? …Will they be rings? What will the shape be? Extreme? Organic? Only time will tell. I can only say that I am looking forward to the journey. 
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But without someone stepping up and doing it it’s not going to happen.
That’s the problem with many yoyoers. We are way too happy to see what needs doing but are too lazy to do it and make it happen.
Also. I want what this kid is smoking.
The tolerances most yoyos go through nowadays is insane. Yoyos are more than smooth enough. And if you’re not getting long enough sleeps then I doubt it’s something wrong with the yoyo…
Doompod? Fancy seeing you here mate… ;D
Of course, these are only my opinions on the subject and I’m not going to be audacious enough to claim them as hard fact. I don’t doubt that there are people who feel the complete opposite, and I welcome their insight.
You are right, I’m sure that American manufacturers can make (and have indeed already made) fantastically performing bi-metal yo-yos that are also nice to play. I hear that the Space Cowboy falls into this category pretty well, and YYJ has been churning out bi-metals for ages to much acclaim. My point was that although American manufacturers are perfectly capable of making sensational bi-metal yo-yos, I can’t see them taking over the market the same way they currently are in Japan, at least not in the immediate future.
Japan seems to be very contest-orientated, even in their play styles, so most of the yo-yos being churned out from there seem to be designed for competition use. Some variant of a V-shape, low/no wall, similarly sized, often bi-metal, un-blasted (for some reason they don’t seem to like blasting over there). I mean, I struggle with distinguishing the differences between all the similar looking Turning Point and Yoyomonster models, and I’d struggle with sOMEThING as well if they didn’t have the names written on them.
I’m not saying that this is a bad thing at all or that Japanese manufacturers don’t try and make yo-yos that feel nice to play, but there seems to be a real push towards squeezing as much stability and spin as they can out of each yoyo. Therefore bi-metal yo-yos seem to make sense, as you can push more weight to the rims and squeeze out better performance from a lighter weight, something the Draupnir does remarkably.
On the flip side, Onedrop make pretty much every shape and size of yoyo known to man, with each yoyo being relatively unique and distinct, from the Valor down to the Dingo. The Yelets and Cafe Racer are not competition orientated yo-yos, but they still make them regardless.
CLYW have made it fairly clear that their focus is on making a yoyo that feels enjoyable to play rather than just shooting for the best performance (as seen with the Puffin, Cliff, WM2, etc), a trait that seems to have been noticed:
Steve himself said regarding Bi-metals:
So you can see there really doesn’t seem to be a huge drive from the USA towards bi-metals at this point, something which I can’t really see changing for a while at least. Granted, Yoyofactory has been pushing the boat out with the 2014 Genesis and Space Cowboy, but I can’t see this becoming their norm just yet either.
Also, lets not forget the YYJ patent. Lets not talk about it, but let’s not forget it either. 
Asian styles are not competiton oriented. That s purely a coin-cide-nce.
They have always viewed yoyoing as an extreme sport, more than a performance art, or anything else.
Hey everyone.
Just saw this thread. At efreetYoYos we created the “first” Fire yoyo. We consider this as an innovation in the yoyo market. Check out our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/efreetFireYoYo - some nice videos and pictures there.
Also, the yoyos should be at YYE very soon 
duncans magnitude has so many possiablities with all these bye metal yoyos. things are gonna start fighting gravi
From Yoyofactory’s Ask.fm, whilst we were on the subject of Bi-metals…
Looks like they are indeed going to be adding a few more to their line up. Can’t wait to see what they’ve got lined up, especially for that new Vashek Sig. I get the feeling my already Yoyofactory-heavy collection is going to be getting even more 'factry additions in the near future.
In fact… I think I’m gonna go email them now about one of those 7075 protos… 
I wonder how long it’ll take till we get there ;D
Yea, I’m here every now and again. 
Didn’t see the date of the posts though.
Damn you and your necroing Gambit! shakes fist
I think this is already happening and some are on the front end pushing it… look at the Fixed Axle 15 challenge some of us took this year.
Like anything, I see things swinging back to “simple”… look at the wood surge that has occurred.
When I played a yoyo for the first time in 1988, a wood yoyo was not really good… Duncan imperials were the chit and butterflies were way cool.
The Spyy/TMBR Eh is hands down, a competition yoyo and crushes most of the stuff we had back in the day.
The Moxon, Sullivan, anything by OUT, even the little Baldwin, all are amazing throws.
I see a surge of simplicity making a boom and people pushing the limit on fixed throws. Ed and Drew are already on it. The rest of us are hoping to catch up at some point…
As for unresponsive, look at Riccardo Fraolini and what he has done to that world. Maybe we’ll be less “competition” based per se, and move towards a more “let’s challenge one another, check this craziness out” era. We’ll have the yoyo packaged Go Pro, so we can show off those crazy tricks we wish someone saw.