Mine is an Imperial as well. I thought the Butterfly versions were rarer.
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This was my impression as well.
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I’ve looked around a lot and can’t find a picture in imperial anywhere. @edhaponik also said he can’t remember seeing one. @yoyodave42 could probably clear this up.
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Only a prototype on yoyo museum
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Ah you’re right, I looked again and for some reason I always thought it was an imperial 
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Law Offices of Robert M. Smith?
I mean, there are a number of omissions on the page but I’ve never heard of a law office’s No Jives.
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The Law Offices of Robert Smith was a plain maple woody - made by Humingbird and does’t contain any TK branding IIRC. I think there’s one in my picture above.
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There it is, I see it now. So not a No Jive then. Your collection is excellent by the way.
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FYI - I posted a history of the Datachecker/DTS No Jive this morning:
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Anybody know anything about the Kuhn “Territory Ahead” yo-yo? All I know is that The Territory Ahead briefly sold it on their website, but that was long before I stumbled upon it on eBay.
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As seen on Fixed Axle Friday Throws. Up on the Pine River Valley this morning so I grab my Tom Kuhn Pine River Valley Dark.
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Great to have you on here Paul!!!
I haven’t looked out for that one since it’s not a No Jive, but I always loved the look of them. I’m also still so mad my dog Sadie chewed up the Team No Jive patch I got from Steve Brown!
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I’ve been digging into the history of the retail branded No Jives from Tom Kuhn in the mid-80s. I’m trying to nail down the release dates and run sizes for the Kreeger & Sons, Abercrombie & Fitch and Neiman Marcus models. My research on the Abercrombie & Fitch No Jive has uncovered a minimum of three separate production runs. I’m wondering if there are others.
Here are the three that I’ve identified:
From left to right:
- A&F© Copyrighted release - My guess is that this model is the first release before the A&F name was a registered trademark for use on yo-yos. Based on the history of A&F’s trademark applications I believe this model came out after 1981 and before 1987. My gut feeling is that the copyright release came out around 1984.
- A&F® Registered small - I peg this model as the middle release but that’s just a guess. Aside from changing the © to a ®; there is another change. The diameter of the circle that “Abercrombie & Fitch” is wrapped around is wider than the © version; possibly due to a request to ‘make the logo bigger’.
- A&F® Registered big - I believe this to be the final release of the three models. My feeling is that this small ® model was delivered to A&F and their lawyer decided the ® symbol needed to be bigger (typical lawyering). This model would have been released no later than 1987. In 1988 the A&F brand was purchased from Oshman’s by The Limited and all inventory was divested.
During the period of time that Tom Kuhn was producing A&F No Jives the brand was owned by Houston based sporting goods company called Oshman’s. Oshman’s opened its first A&F store in 1979 in Beverly Hills as a high end retailer catering to the upscale consumer. By the mid 80s Oshman’s was operating four A&F stores (additionally in Dallas and two in New York City). With only four stores and a catalog business I can’t see production runs numbering more than a few hundred at the maximum. Tom Kuhn’s minimum run in the 80s was 100 units and I expect that each of the runs probably numbered between 100 and 200.
If anyone has additional A&F designs or details on their released that I haven’t documented here I’d appreciate hearing about them.
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Don’t know much about the history of those, but I do know Abercrombie originally started as a hunting and fishing company. Some fly fisherman search out their original fly boxes, they’re really good. Find it funny what they’ve turned into eventually
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The history of A&F is an interesting read. The brand has risen and fallen multiple times since it’s inception in 1892. The current youth clothing version bears little resemblance to the majority of its history. The years we care about, when the yo-yos were being sold, are a mere blip in the overall history of the company.
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Figured I’d share this for anyone who might not have seen it before. I mentioned in a post years ago that the Klutz Yo-Yo book had these really visually appealing images of TK yoyos in the back pages. Really nicely sized, great detail, etc. Just real dream material for a 12/ 13 year old kid playing on a $5 Smothers Brothers YOYO Man yoyo and staring at these gorgeous mail-order beauties from San Francisco. This might have been in the late 80s/ early 90s.
I have no idea why I did this, but I ripped out the 2nd and possibly 3rd page and that’s lost forever. I’m pretty sure it had an image of the Flying Camel and maybe the Diamond Special and/or Silver Bullet? I think the last page may have been a mail order form, but I was a Canadian pre-teen and there was no way I was going to figure out how to order these things. At any rate, here’s the one page I still have. If anyone else has the other page, feel free to share!
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Sorry this is a late response to your note but I have one of the new Woodies, and they play really nice. Just a solid, well-weighted fixie to me. My kid hit it on the floor a bunch one session, and so it became loose; but it was easy to glue back and now it works the same as before 
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Here you go. I recently picked up another copy of the first printing of this book. I credit it with getting me started with yo-yoing. I think I was a rebellious 14 year-old when I ‘lifted’ just the yo-yo from a bookstore in the mall. A few days later I made my parents take me back to the mall so I could swipe the book for the instructions.
While I realize that petty theft got me into this hobby, I think the many thousands of dollars I’ve spent on yo-yos in the past 35 years have more than made up for my youthful transgressions.
Also, I was really happy to find a copy recently with the original yo-yo still attached.
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Oh man, thanks for sharing! It’s pretty interesting that yours has prices listed ($17 for a Flying Camel!) and mine doesn’t, but that could be the US vs Canadian printings. Your ‘Kuhn catalog’ also seems to be much earlier in the book than mine. FWIW I’m feeling relieved that 40-something me actually remembered what was on that missing page after all these years!
There’s petty theft in my yo-yoing background too, but that involved the Yomega I held onto from the early 90s until I got back into things a few years ago. Now that I think about it, I need to go back to that store and leave $20-30 USD laying around as soon as we’re allowed back into the States.
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