I started (and subsequently stopped) throwing over ten years ago, when the Yomega Brain was a big deal. My friend and I thought we were badasses with them, and laughed when someone else came up to use with a yoyo that had hallowed out halves and no clutch system. It was until a moth or so later, we realized it had come from a little yoyo kiosk in the section of the mall we never went to. We both ended up asking our parents a couple of alluminum yoyos by Mag (they still around?), for $50. We got them.
I know this is an intro topic of sorts, but I decided to bypass the actual intro topic, as I’ve got a couple questions…
I just got back into throwing, thanks to my job as a stocker at a major toy chain. To my surprise, we feature quite the selection of yoyos by Yomega, Duncan, and even Yoyo Factory. Now I’ve seen silicone response disks, polyester strings, and even concaved bearings, etc., when I went to read up on these new models.
When did all these new (to me) aspects of yoyos come about, and what’s in store for the future? Hell, I’ve just come across a couple videos of folks using fishing swivels on their strings, for example. How reliable is this modification?
I stopped yoyoing when I was 16 or 17, and now I’m 29. My word, how things have changed! Feels good to be back. Now if only I could get this binding thing down…
Well, Another one of these topics…
A good way to see how yoyoing has progressed at the top level is by looking up the world yoyo champion’s freesyles. So i’ll give you a list of the champs, but i only know it from 11 years ago to today.
WYYC (World Yoyo Contest) Champions that you should look up on google:
2003 - Johnny Delvalle (I think i spelled that right)
2004 - Hiroyuki Suzuki
2005 - Hiroyuki Suzuki
2006 - Hiroyuki Suzuki (again)
2007 - Yuuki Spencer
2008 - John Ando
2009 - Shinya Kido
2010 - Jensen Kimmit (My favorite freestyle of all the champs)
2011 - Marcus Koh
2012 - Hiroyuki Suzuki
2013 - Janos Karancz
2014 - Gentry Stein
Hope this gives you an idea of how yoyoing has progressed in the last 11 years!
Welcome back! It’s always good to have someone picking up a yoyo again. ;D
The swivel tension thing seems like a great idea, but I’m not sure it’ll catch on in general play. Modding yoyos isnt as big as it used to be and 1A has already come so far without swivels that I can’t see them being adopted in normal play. Also a lot of people compete nowadays and they are as yet not allowed in contests that I’m aware of.
As far as when all modern yoyo advances came about, I’ll be expecting Kyo, Yoyodoc or Steve Brown to come in with a sensational date-by-date account of when it all happened. In the meantime here’s a little history on unresponsive play to start:
There’s a quote from André on one of the ‘learn’ pages of YYE, and below is a great post from Yossarian, a forum member:
…and one from Nathan, who is a professional player:
I hope these answer the question as far as modern unresponsive play goes.
In recent years the design of yoyos has changed from the more undersized, mid/high walled organic throws of the mid- 2000’s like the YYF 888:
To the larger, more rim-weighted, low walled steep V shapes prominent in most of today’s modern throws:
With the addition of a lot more horizontal play, the lower walls of the yoyo make life a lot easier. Also the performance is a tad better for today’s crazily long tech freestyles.
Even more recently there has been an up-surge in the popularity of horizontal finger spins, pushing a lot of recent designs to incorporate a design that assists in this move, like the Yoyofactory Horizon, Eternal Throw Elysian, Duncan Strix and many more.
Recently again, there has also been a seeming increase in the amount of bi-metal yoyos being produced. It seems to me that this is going to be the next big thing as far as yoyo design evolution goes. I know it’s been around for years, but it seems to be really taking off in recent times.
Don’t worry, I tried and gave up yoyoing when I was about 15/16 as well, and only picked it up last year at 23. Still, with enough practice it shouldn’t take you too long to catch up with the rest of today’s yoyoers, so keep at it. Welcome once again to the community.
