The Yonami Code from Rain City Skills - name story

Manufacturer Official News
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Yo! So I made the mistake of releasing a yoyo while I was at PNWR - bad plan. Great day, but I was so swamped between the long day (out of the house at 5a, back in at 3am the next morning) and the MASSIVE number of new yoyoers that wandered by the table. Fantastic time.

But I totally forgot to let y’all know.

So here it is. This is a joint signature between Ashley, Bailey, and Jake on our team. I tasked them with designing the yoyo they wished they’d had when they started, and they knocked it out of the park. Modified H shape, wide, comfortable design, lego hub, but with a cup thats great for fingerspins and thumb grinds as-is. Beautifully balanced, and we’Full details on the website, but I’ve got a story on the name!

So a month or so ago as we were finally ready to release our yoyo called “The Cheat Code” (after sitting on them for a year) I reached out to yoyoexpert. Andre replied with "I love it, but you need to talk to Brandon Vu, he’s making a yoyo with the same name.

Oops. . Brandon had his own cheat code run ready, and he had engraved the words on the yoyos! Since we didn’t, I kindly let him have the name. We’d waited waaay too long, but I’m glad we did so he wasn’t stuck with a bunch of yoyos with a name that was already used!

The best part was that creativity under pressure led to a new, better (for us) name

The Yonami Code. If you aren’t familiar with the “Konami Code”, it was a code that worked on a bunch of games by Konami back in the 80s and 90s, one of the most iconic cheat codes out there.

So if you already got your “Yonami Code” that’s why it says Cheat Code on the box.

So a nod to Brandon Vu for being a solid human and working through this with me. I actually really wanted to have us both use the same name, not tell anyone we talked, then act all surprised and ride the free marketing of the community arguing over who copied who for a while, but he’s much less of a troublemaker than I am.

I’ll say, our yoyo rocks, but I got to try his at PNWR and it rocks in a whole unique way!

Thanks for reading and happy throwing!

Jeremy

p.s. here’s a couple reviews

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Hahaha! Truly a missed opportunity at a wrestling-level work. Think of all the insults-hurling and passive aggressive compliments you and Brandon could have thrown out there about each other and your yoyos. This could have led to a split in the yoyo community and merchandise sales of T-shirts and coffee mugs bearing “Jeremy 3:16” and “Brandon says Suck It” … and all that could only be resolved in a massive PPV yoyo-off.

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I know, right? so awesome!
sigh I may need to actually do this on purpose with a collab with another brand down the road, just for the lolz!

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