how old were you
why did you start
and what was your first yoyo
did anyone you know yoyo and that got you into it
please share all the details
ill start
i was searching on amazon and i saw a magicyoyo and i watched the video of him doing tricks and i said i want to do that so i got a magic yoyo n11 (i was 11 and still am 11) i learned some tricks and then upgraded to a shutter wide angle and learned a lot of yoyo tricks on yotricks
and then i started 4a and got a spire then learned some 4a tricks and upgraded to a sky dancer
and now im looking to learn 2a and 3a after the summer oh by the way i got into yoyoing a month ago and now have 1 magicyoyo n11 1 replay pro 1 shutter wide angle
a horizon a superwide a spire and sky dancer i got into yoyoing twice before but now im not
gonna quit
I don’t really have much of a story. Like everyone of a certain age, I had an Imperial when I was a kid. I’m an old guy now and picked up my first throw as an adult 7 years ago. I enjoy collecting to a point. The point being i don’t seach the BSTs for yoyos, just buy new. I never got very good, but I enjoy messing around for relaxation.
Started playing kendama in 2013 and would often see some crossover and hanging out of prominent Kendama and yoyo pros at the time.
Around 2015 there was a Duncan Kiosk at downtown Disney in Anaheim that would have dama jams I was starting to drive up to. Mainly was there for kendama with homies in that area but was introduced to yoyo by friends that worked at the kiosk at the time and meeting other yoyoers that would stop by.
My dama friend Louke Hernandez that worked there gave me he 1st run butterfly xt and a metal racer without caps. A bit later on in the year, my dad was visiting Hawaiian shop called hnl kendama and bought me a one drop 2013 benchmark V in a blue and yellow splash as a graduation present and first proper unresponsive metal.
I would drift in and out of seeing what’s happening the yoyo scene and even any media, but I’ll always have a throw close to me at all times like I do with kendama haha Yo-yo became my all time chiller/fidget/flow state activity.
I can’t remember any one inciting incident, but they were kinda popular on the playground in the 90’s . I had a butterfly and always appreciated how nice it felt compared to the junky dollar store things, and how it could be more capable for tricks than an imperial, which also felt really nice. But then yeah I found out about Yomega at school, then I really really wanted a Fireball. I remember getting the fireball for Christmas and just being soooooo stoked, running down to my friends house to show it off and all that.
I also ended up with this cassette:
Which I watched it many many times.
I would pick it back up again from time to time when I would stumble across them going through my things
More recently I had seen some videos online, I think the first ones were angel2up, and I was inspired to dig them up, and well here we are.
I’ve heard of a few people with a similar story, but I’ll go ahead and tell my version. When I was in third grade, the NED show came to our school. A guy got on stage and did what I thought was some EPIC tricks. Now that I think about it he was just doing around the world and walk the dog.. but as a third grader he might as well have been doing magic tricks up there. Later that afternoon they sent us home with a booklet of yoyos they were selling. I begged my mom and did chores for her until she finally gave in and let me buy one that had an auto return system. I carried that thing around with me everywhere but thought I had gotten a real piece of crap upon trying to walk the dog with it on the playground. Stupid thing always came right back up I bought a Duncan butterfly from Walmart a few days later and was very pleased to find it could do some “actual” tricks.
Flash forward to high school and I’d forgotten my love of yoyos and replaced it with other hobbies such as fingerboarding, then skateboarding, and then went full throttle into a passion for music. It wasn’t until college when I saw a guy throwing a shutter that I decided to try yo-yoing again. I picked up a Duncan Torque (a surprisingly good unresponsive) at a local toy store and haven’t looked back. Yo-yoing has given me an escape from the stress of life and a constant excitement to learn new tricks. Have I spent too much? Absolutely. But I love it. I’ve been teaching kids at my preschool to yoyo now and am honored to introduce them to such a fun skill. Who knows… maybe I’ll meet one of them on the forums someday.
WAIT this was the same thing that happened to me!! I yo-yoed after witnessing the same NED show (in 3rd grade as well) until middle school and then got bullied out of it and found an old yoyo in storage during college and fell right back in love
The NED yo-yos were overpriced and so bad thinking back on it
Every year growing up my family took a trip to the Oregon coast and we always stopped at kite shops, one mid to late 90s day when we stopped in they had yo-yos, including cool metal ones behind a glass cabinet. I begged, haggled, and agreed to complete a summer of manual labor at my uncles not exactly a farm but kind of homestead in exchange for a sweet metal yoyo. I white washed a few hundred feet of fence, hauled irrigation pipe, mowed the yard, fed horses, pulled weeds, etc. all summer long. I thought it was totally worth it at the time, but in retrospect my uncle probably got the better end of the deal.
I played that yoyo for years obsessively for hours at a time, moved, lost it, and moved on. About 2 years ago I picked it back up and have been full steam ahead since.
It was 2014 (11 years old) and kendama took over my school. I was watching some Kendama USA videos in my living room TV with my friends. I remember us trying to do every trick done by Colin Sanders. After a while, we decided to go outside but we left YouTube on auto play. We came back around an hour later and this video was playing. My favorite yoyo video to this day.
I was in awe (my friends did not have the same reaction). I credit Charles for sparking my interest in yoyo. Hope to meet the dude someday!
I’ve had responsive yoyos but that was my first time seeing unresponsive play. The first unresponsive yoyo I bought was a Dark Magic 2. That yoyo was demolished and treated like a kendama. Wish I still had it so I could send photos.
I wish I knew! It was lost and I haven’t been able to figure out what it was from memory. It was metal, bought sometime in the 90s and cost about a hundred bucks. Every now and then I try to figure out what it was by browsing yoyo museum or eBay.
how old were you?
Probably around 13, it was the late 90s when the big boom was going on
why did you start?
Literally everyone got a yoyo almost simultaneously at school, during the boom
and what was your first yoyo
We were not super well off, but my Dad got me a Duncan Butterfly. He was born in the late 1930s and told me, “this is literally all you need.” Looking back, I get it now, especially now that I have taken it back to my roots with responsive.play
did anyone you know yoyo and that got you into it
please share all the details
Yup, my best friend Chris Garner, God rest his soul. We yo-yoed constantly, every chance we had. We finally got good enough to beat the kid at school that was champ in a yoyo battle. Chris and I were thick as thieves until he passed. I don’t have anyone that yoyos with me in person these days besides my daughter on occasion (that’s a blessing though on so many levels), so this community means more than words
I bought a Duncan butterfly from Walmart a few days later and was very pleased to find it could do some “actual” tricks.