Also true of the yoffy… just because it is “intentionally different” doesn’t mean that those differences were… uh… good?
Agreed, the list citing yo-yos from ~2000 is an objectively (much) worse list than the list citing yo-yos from ~2018. For sure there has been great progress in the field of yo-yo design since 2000!
When was the morph master made? It’s probably to old… Whatevs I still hate it!
I’ve got another contender: meet the Eppendorf
Backstory:
Eppendorf is a centrifuge manufacturer, you know those round things that scientists put those little tubes of liquid into and it spins really fast to separate the different components of the liquids inside the tubes?
Well they have this model that [I think] came out recently that has a special cap that goes into it. Does the cap look familiar?
So I guess someone who works for this company likes to play with yo-yos and figured out a way to turn these caps into a yo-yo. Thus, the Eppendorf was born.
They did not sell these, but instead they were offered as a free incentive to fill out a simple survey on their website. This news was dropped into the yoyo community on Instagram and I just couldn’t help myself. I went and filled out the survey, literally like 5 questions, and about a week later this little guy showed up in my mailbox. I actually thought this whole exchange was hilarious.
The yoyo came setup responsive, and I don’t have a scale but this thing is way too heavy to be a responsive yo-yo. It was kind of terrifying to play it responsive. So I threw a regular size C bearing in there, and this thing is a novelty at best. The weight distribution is all over the place, it is the heaviest yoyo I have, and those raised ridges in the catch zone are extremely frustrating because the string gets caught on them regularly during play.
It is collectively the most unique, worst, [rarest?] and terrifying yo-yos that I have in my collection.
I think this is a pretty good contender for this list
That’s kind of rad!
And terrible at the same time.
Was that survey recent? I saw one of these and heard a similar story about how to get them quite a long time ago. Maybe a year or more. I’d like one. 
Survey is still up on the website. I kind of want one also. I’m just not sure I can get myself to lie and pretend that I’m some lab looking for a centrifuge.
@vegabomb yeah it was a pretty good while ago. A year sounds about right. I did land a good clean finger spin on that side cup once
@photogeek it’s technically not lying. I mean, the questions are super vague and I’m pretty sure expected people to do the survey just for the yo-yo. It’s not like a legitimate full-length survey, I think they just needed some way to get the yo-yos out into the public without actually selling them.
And I’m also certain that they closed down the yoyo promotion, unless they made more of them and decided to continue doing it. But they ran out pretty quick from what I remember
You have really landed on something interesting here!
Also, yes. Yes it looks terrible.
……………
You got it all wrong, man! The purpose here is to learn from our yo-yo design mistakes, that’s how we turn that frown upside down! 
Yeah good luck my wife is a literal scientist who works for a biotech company and uses these kinds of machines for real, and even she never got a reply from that form.
It got ruined by being posted on reddit with an implicit invitation to “fill it out and get a free yoyo” 
Merry Christmas to you as well sir, sorry to be a Debbie downer. I was just going through my collection last night and found this little guy. Thought I would share its interesting backstory with the community.
For the record, this thing really is pretty terrifying to use. You know how high wall organic yo-yos that don’t have a response bump are easy to steer and can be pretty sassy if your technique is not clean? This yoyo is straight up bipolar. One slight mistake and you’ve got a serious chunk of aluminum straight to the knuckles. 
I think it’s a great example of how design can be flawed in a yoyo… the lesson here is “don’t take a random chunk of vaguely yo-yo-like aluminum from a device and call it a yo-yo!” 
QUESTION! If it was much lighter would it work better as a yo-yo?
Maaaaybe. With those ridges in the catch zone, I’d still feel like I’m playing roulette. Those things are serious hindrance. This could be an excellent training tool to push you to clean up your technique
This is why marketing departments get ridiculed
Does it have response pads?
I somehow doubt that the venn diagram of “people who are looking to buy a $15,000 centrifuge” and “people who understand yoyoing well enough to make fun of this marketing yoyo” has very much overlap.
Honestly, in terms of marketing giveaways, it’s far more clever than 95% of the stuff I’ve ever run into. That doesn’t make it a great yoyo, but it’s still pretty neat and I’d be happy to have one on the shelf.
Yep, industry-standard guts
Marketing departments get ridiculed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is being completely out of tune with their target market, which was probably the case here. Not speaking of the yo-yo specifically.
I’m curious how you came to this conclusion. Aside from perhaps @codinghorror’s wife (who tried to get one), nobody on this thread is their target market.
I mean, maybe everyone in the bio-tech/medical/etc industry hated the yoyos. For all I know, there could be a long standing anti-yoyo mindset in the halls of bio-tech. But I think it’s more likely that people thought they were just a unique bit of advertising swag.