As have I. I still have the one I bought in 1998. Don’t think I’ve ever knocked the TBB or its place in the pantheon of significant yo-yo’s. Nor have I ever suggested that the 1a revolution could have happened on wood. @zslane asked when said revolution happened and I mentioned I usually think of Kickin Tricks as the time it really arrived.
As I’ve said before, your use of the phrase “holding the field of yo-yo back” indicates an assumption that there are only two directions - forward and back. But there are a lot of reasons to play yo-yo and a lot of ways to progress - not just the easiest path to a long sleeper or the most technical trick. Maybe we fundamentally disagree on that point. But I’ve mostly played wood for 12+ years and I don’t actually feel I’ve been “held back”.
I’m still working my way up to the “beefcaking” era at the moment.
The Turbo Bumble Bee (and GT, and Cold Fusion, and Cold Fusion GT) were clearly the inflection point ~1997-1998 which set the stage for the next 5 years… but they were all narrow gap.
Takeshi started recessing Freehands which “maximized” the FH gap by lowering the response in early 2003. But I kinda see JD’s trifecta that year (and the Hitman) as the moment wide gap really took off. Those shipped w “adjustable gap” (so that kids could still yo-yo with them sans bind). But they were functionally wide-gapped for sure.
In terms of what created the unresponsive movement though - a HUGE factor was the Renegade. Because when its massive starbursts wore down (after like a week) you kinda HAD to bind.
I mean I’'d invite anybody to contradict or add context, but yeah. I mentioned the Renegade in my edit above as being similarly important to the development of unresponsive, and Takeshi’s recess was the first/best structural mod to improve the gap toward unresponsive play.
But I think Hitman was the first popular wide gapped production model which was really geared toward that new style.
It all impresses me, to be quite honest. When I see someone playing with skill and style, I don’t even notice or care what yoyo they’re using, unless there’s something about its aesthetics that catches my eye.
When I got my Turbo Bumblebee GT (ca. 2000), I was told it was the most advanced yoyo on the market that could be used in a contest. I was somewhat isolated from the yoyo community, so my knowledge of when binding and wide gaps started becoming popular is limited, but since I’ve taken a liking to YoyoJam and its history, I may have some information that would be useful. YoyoJam seemed to be on the cutting edge of yoyo advancement, especially through the 2000s, and they may be able to shed some light on these matters. It looks as though wider gaps started to become popular or were at least created a little bit earlier than the Hitman. The earliest yoyos in my collection with a wide gap are the YYJ Phat Phaktor and the Phat Boy (same as the Phaktor but with a partially ceramic bearing) from 2002. They are large organic plastic hybrids with narrow brass rims and have a wide C size bearing with a starburst response system and an adjustable gap. The Matrix also came out in 2002, but I think it uses a smaller bearing with a weaker response system. Sadly, I don’t think I have anything else from 2002 in the way of YoyoJams or anything else, and I’m not sure if wide C bearings were used by any other manufacturers before that. Furthermore, the YYJ Hitman was accompanied by a number of yoyos that could go completely unresponsive in 2003. YoyoJam models that I have from 2003 include the Speeder, Big Ben, Mini Mo-Trix, and the Night Moves 1.
YoyoJam yoyos that I have from before 2002 do not have the wide gap. I suspect that the move to unresponsive was a gradual thing, in part because of the gap in the time between the late 90s when we had all tug responsive throws and 2002/2003 when the wide gap unresponsives showed up. Instead, companies like YoyoJam were using a narrow gap with no response system at all, or a weak “reverse” starburst as in the case of the early YYJ Spinfaktor models from 1998-2000, which were more of “semi-responsive” models.
A Quick addendum: For these semi-responsive yoyos, it seems that many of them will play completely unresponsive (as in, you’re not bracing for a snap back when you try a slack trick) with one well placed shim. I did this for my SpinFaktor.
I hope this helps, and feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken about something. I’ve been trying to retrace the steps yoyoing took since ~2000 myself since I got back into it around 2010 or so.
One more edit to what I just said. I forgot about the YoyoJam Patriot. The YoyoMuseum.com website puts iterations of the Patriot (full size organic shaped plastic lightweight yoyo) at around 2001 to 2002 and used a large C size bearing with a starburst response system and adjustable gap just like the Phat Phaktor.
