I think that fun is used to describe the yo-yo itself not if you can have fun with it. I know that sounds dumb. It’s kinda like when you find music that makes you really jam with the yo-yo. Yo-yos called fun are normally quirky in one way or another. Those quirks make you play in a different style that is fun. Whereas a competitive throw makes you want to play clean and smooth. When I throw my 420 for example being perfect is the farthest from what I’m looking for. I just want to have a good time and chill.
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Fun to me is the similar to saying the throw has personality, or soul. Usually this doesn’t go well with competition throws but there might be one or two throws that are fun and somewhat competitive.
If you come from a video game community or into acting though fun could mean bad though. “It looks like your having fun” could be passive trash talk, but in terms of judging a yoyo it’s not bad, just usually not competitive. Fun could just mean that it doesn’t handle some aspects of the yoyo as well as competition ready ones. Like the Edgeless is bad at horizontals and isn’t as stable as the Edge, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to try all of your hardest tricks on the edgeless, it might even make a thrower better.
Yoyos are fun. Yoyo reviews, not so much in my opinion, because a review is just someone’s opinion. If I really want to know about a yoyo I just pm a member that I know has similar preferences and has played the yoyo, and ask pointed questions. It always works better than watching a review. I repeat yoyos are fun, reviews not so much. No offense intended to those that make reviews, I used to dabble with reviews myself.
All yoyos are fun, if a competition yoyo isn’t fun and a non competition yoyo is fun, or vice versa, why would you use a yoyo that wasn’t fun? Would you compete if it wasn’t fun? Would you yoyo if it wasn’t fun?
I wouldn’t. I yoyo because it makes life better.
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I would agree with the yoyos for different kinds of people statement.
A perfect example>
At the National Yoyo Museum in Chico California; they have a 256 pound yo-yo that actually works.
Unfortunately, no one large enough to throw it can get inside the Store to see it. So it sadly remained unsold.
I have heard that it would probably be very painful to catch on a hard comeback.
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I know where you’re coming from, but I might speculate that you might be reading the argument wrong. I don’t think that any serious yoyo reviewer has specifically ever said that a yoyo being alow/unstable/sharp makes it fun. What they could be saying is “This yoyo was not designed to be fast/stable/comfortable, which puts it outside the competitive design category, and puts it in the less serious category”.
I agree with you on that…
I would think an insane performer ‘would be fun’.
If you watch throws and brews he did a video on this topic. To summarize, he basically was saying truly bad yoyos just aren’t a thing for the most part these days. I agree with this- Standard, big name and boutique manufactures don’t put out duds. Primarily in the rare cases of “bad” yoyos being put out, design and material flaws are the main issue.
I’m looking at the early YYF Nine Dragons and One Drop Rally as fairly recent examples of a very rare occurrence. But, 99% of the time, even with a weird shape, yoyo companies can make a decent yoyo.
The most recent example of this non dud principle I can think of would be the One Drop fat tire. It specifically says that it was designed because, “David wanted fat rims. Really really really fat rims.” Because of this design choice, the yoyo is the opposite of a competition design. Personally I’d rather use a Markmont Classic or good plastic like the Dove for competing. The reviews seem to say it is somewhat challenging to use but also praise it for rewarding precision and good techniques. It is still better then some much older yoyo like the Losi Cherry Bomb by a long shot.
My point is, this is still a high quality yoyo made by high quality people, and whether it is “fun” is entirely up to preference. Fun is exactly what you want to be, let’s just not use it as a crutch for preference based criticism.
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I’ve never understood the whole “competition” vs “fun” verbiage. To me, landing tricks is fun, and if a “competition” yoyo is going to be better for that, then that’s a “fun” yoyo to me.
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Hehe not gonna lie and drop a totally noob sentiment here. For me yoyos that performs well are also yoyos that are fun for me.
This Converge by MK1 yoyo I tried yesterday courtesy of @E_S_H_D from team @MarkD was a performance machine, and hence was fun for me to spend some time on 
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I must admit that initially I thought the title of this thread was organic lovers bait!
Essentially it turns out that different people enjoy different things.
I’m an intermediate player at very very best and I am sure I would progress much quicker if I really focused and used performance driven yoyos. I recently had a G2 Covenant and man was it powerful and ‘stable’ and using it made me feel like I had to put less effort in to pulling off the tricks that I know. It is objectively a great yoyo however I just didn’t enjoy it, it felt like it was doing a lot of the work for me and I felt less connected with what I was doing which removed a lot of the fun.
I really like yoyos which allow you to feel what you are doing and as vague as tyhat sounds I believe it is how I shall always feel.
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The quality of yo-yos has risen over the past 10 years. The expectations of buyers has also risen. Reviewers need to raise their standards to match. In every price range there are a few major standouts, some good values, some fun yo-yos that are different than the norm, and some that either underperform or are flat out clunkers compared to other yo-yos in the price range.
I do feel for reviewers who who depend on companies sending them product to review. I also appreciate when they start off saying if they received the yo-yo from the manufacturer to review. At that point I listen for what makes the yo-yo different and don’t expect to hear bad comments. But when someone titles their channel to make people think they will hear the honest truth, then takes a stance that there are no bad things to say about the 100 yo-yos they have reviewed…
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I think this idea does come up a lot when discussing organic shaped yo-yos. Maybe instead of fun, “different” is a better adjective.
If most of your yo-yos are angular, the rounded one will certainly feel a lot different from others.
Edit: I enjoy this forum because it’s relaxing to think of these fairly obscure ideas- to most people at least.
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I totally get what you’re saying. One analogy that comes to mind is driving. A lot of guys feel that a manual transmission car is more fun because it puts them more in control of the driving experience. They have to “work” more to control the vehicle, but that’s where the fun is for them. They want to feel like the car is responding exclusively to their input and not handling all the lower-level details automatically for them. I completely understand this point of view.
On the other hand, when I was learning to drive, I had to learn on a stick and I would have much preferred to learn on an automatic transmission car. There are enough other critical things you have to pay attention to when learning to drive that adding the complications of mastering the clutch, stick, and throttle is just plain frustrating, if not a little dangerous. Much the same can be said of learning 1A yoyoing.
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I’ve made the same analogy before, but more with driver assists vs driver control.
Lately I’ve been playing my Bonsai a lot. It’s a mini unresponsive made of wood by @Glenacius_K . It’s one of my least “capable” unresponsive yoyos, but I just enjoy it so much. I find it supremely fun.
I’m sure it would not be much fun to some other throwers, because they might find it frustrating. They might feel like they’re fighting with the yoyo, rather than being able to just concentrate on their tricks. To them a fun yoyo, is one that allows them the best chance to land the hardest tricks.
I feel like I could have fun with almost any yoyo, and I definitely appreciate both ends of the “performance” spectrum.
As to the OP question. In general I don’t think they necessarily mean “bad” by “fun”, but I can see where there might be some correlation. I think a lot depends on the reviewer, and how enthusiastically they say “fun”.
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I wouldn’t try to use my old tigershark to win a 1A competition or even to learn new tricks, but it can still be a lot of fun. It just depends on what I want to do. I often wonder when I see “fun” mentioned in a review if this is the kind of context they mean.
The only yoyos I have that aren’t fun are the ones that are broken, need maintenance or the very very rare ones that are just bad. For example, think about how it feels when your favorite competition throw’s bearing becomes responsive. It just takes the fun out of how that yoyo is meant to play. For some people the difference between a flat or centering bearing can impact this fun factor.
I can’t think of any truly bad yoyos in my possession right now, but try this: put a thick lubed slim responsive bearing in some hyper modern competition yoyo like a bi-shutter (actually don’t do this unless you have an appropriate length axle, the stock one won’t work). Try using it for either current meta tricks (apologize to your knuckles) or responsive tricks. The balance is all wrong, it’s going to be a bad experience unless you happen to be a masochist. Imagine someone selling this exact yoyo, I would argue this is a bad yoyo as sold, BUT some basic mods (axle, bearing) would transform it to one of the best bimetal yoyos available today.
I’ve found that string, response, bearing all play a major factor in my enjoyment of some yoyos. I’ve had many where I just don’t enjoy it stock, but some combination of these tweaks will turn it into something I find really fun.
Yoyos are fun. But it can all be kinds of complicated, which is also part of the the fun, and is definitely a factor in why we’re all here.
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I don’t know if it’s currently understood to mean bad, but I think the Yoyofriends Hummingbird is very fun and many consider it to be the best yoyo available right now. I think a fun yoyo is just something that doesn’t perform like a Draupnir. Any yoyo that has its own personality and doesn’t just feel like a machine. I think there’s a spectrum from left to right: on the left is pure competition, like the draupnir. It just feels like a machine for competition and not a toy or anything fun. And a little to the right of that is most stuff, and the farther right you go, the more fun and less competitive it gets. Something like the alleycat 650b would be very far right on the spectrum. I know there are yoyos that kind of defy that, such as the hummingbird, but most probably fit somewhere in there.
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But what makes a yoyo feel like a “machine”?? I have never played with a yoyo that hasn’t been fun or felt like a machine in any way. I find competition oriented yoyos a lot of fun, so I don’t entirely understand what makes them lack character or enjoyability.
This is entirely subjective. There is no objective criteria for more fun or less fun. You can’t really say that comp yoyos aren’t enjoyable because that’s just not true.
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I agree, @MoosaK.
I also don’t understand what it means for a yoyo to have personality or “soul”. That metaphor is stretched so wide I hesitate to even try to interpret it.
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Yeah, usually I break it down as flowiness and floatiness, try not to call the yoyo just good etc. Also a performance yoyo could be fun, for example, The raytracer is a comp monster with some decent float and flow to it, then again fun perceptive is different from person to person, I say the better way is to make flowiness and floatiness as a objective and if that yoyo has that something special, explain clearly why.
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Most people who review yoyos aren’t getting them for free. Maybe they know that people probably worked hard to make that yoyo, and they don’t want to badmouth their work? But yeah, I do think that constructive criticism is a good thing.