God the DANG1 is a confusing yoyo. Originally sold as “like a Project with big rims and Side Effects,” the DANG1 was a pretty popular release at the time, even hitting JP storefronts with names like gear of spin and winding of re. Before I even talk about how this yoyo plays, I have to talk about how beautiful of a yoyo the DANG1 is. I absolutely love the p/d engraving on the DANG1, it’s very iconic at this point and basically the hallmark of the DANG1. I love it. You can clearly see the influence of the Project on this yoyo, from the flat rims and cup to the projection grooves in the profile. Now, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of throwing an original Project, you might know that it lacks in a certain area, stability. The DANG1 by description aims to sort-of address this by adding bigger rims, but unfortunately the DANG1 also has some stability issues. They aren’t as pronounced as the Project, but definitely there. If you’re Paul Dang this probably isn’t as much of a concern, as he grew up learning on even less stable yoyos, but by modern standards the DANG1 is unstable.
For playfeel, the DANG1 is quite light, clocking in at 63.2g with ultralight side effects, and I think this is the main weakness of the yoyo, and honestly many side effect yoyos. Putting heavier side effects in a yoyo that already is unstable due to a (relative) lack of rimweight only makes the stability problems worse. I tried using legos and flat caps and liked those as well, but going heavier than that starts to really work against the purpose of this yoyo. The DANG1 was built to be nimble, and if you yoyo’d in the era when the DANG1 came out, you probably know the playfeel that this yoyo was targeting, lots of rail combos, fast hops and bounces, and getting in and out of chopsticks. This “zippy-ness” comes at a costs though, as when you begin to push the DANG1 faster it starts to become difficult to control.
That all being said, ultimately the performance of this yoyo just didn’t hold up to the competition level. Paul Dang quickly ditching it in favor of other yoyos to compete with (I believe he mostly stopped using it in 2013, but this is based on analyzing like 480p Youtube videos). The fatal flaw is just a lack of spintime, which, if you want some anecdotal evidence, Paul Dang threw the DANG1 11 times in one of the 2 minute freestyles I watched (I think one was due to a mistake), which is an insane amount of times to need to re-throw your yoyo in a world where players now are doing 2 minute freestyles in one throw. I would label the spintime as “acceptable” by modern standards.
I feel like onedrop slightly missed the mark here, and this is one of the many onedrop “performance-oriented” throws that suffers from a lack of spintime. I struggled with putting this between C and D tier, and eventually opted for D tier for “DANG this yoyo doesn’t spin very long.“ Even at the time period, I feel like there were other more competitive offerings that I would rather have. The two I’ll point out here are the ILYY Sakura and onedrop CODE1. Here’s a shot of the three profiles (DANG1 → CODE1 → Sakura):
As you can see, all three definitely share some shape characteristics, but both the CODE1 and Sakura hold up better in 2023 due to just better weight distribution, so I would recommend hunting down one of those unless the lightness of the DANG1 is really speaking to you. Also worth taking a look at the DANG1’s much better successor, the DANG2.
more reviews in the pipeline, lots of life to live 