I yoyoed back in the late 60s and early 70s. The Duncan Imperial was the yoyo of choice for most of us. I continued playing around with yoyos until around '94, and then families and real jobs (my wife wouldn’t let me remain a grad student forever) got in the way and I stopped for a while. A gift my wife gave me for Christmas got me looking at yoyo videos, and they were talking about crazy things like “binds”. Plus, there are a HUGE number of yoyos and yoyo companies out there. It was shocking. So I have become completely enamored with non-responsive play. It’s almost like an addiction…involving string. But it occurred to me that I have no idea when this revolution took place. Who came up with the first non-responsive and how?
I don’t know the specifics, but I think unresponsive yoyos first appeared around 2003 give or take…
The earliest were probably modded with longer axels and double bearings and/or spacers.
I hope someone posts a good link. I’m also curious about this and there doesn’t seem to be a lot written about it.
Earliest I heard of was around the 000’s when renegade’s starburst wore out.
I remember Steve Brown saying once that Hironori Mii showed him bind returns back in the late 90s, so they’ve been around at least that long. I don’t think they were that common and were used more for getting tighter winds with low spin than for truly unresponsive play, though. I think the shift generally happened throughout the early- to mid-2000s, starting with players modding their yoyos to be less responsive and gradually moving toward manufacturers catering to unresponsive play. I’m not sure who was the first, but Difeyo had some early unresponsive designs, and YoYoJam had their adjustable gap system that allowed for unresponsive play. Modders would have preceded them, though.
I think 2004 was the first year players were not required to use a responsive yoyo for 1A compulsories (the prelims at Worlds used to be a compulsory trick list instead of freestyles, and for previous years the trick descriptions required the yoyo to be returned without a bind). Players were using unresponsive yoyos in freestyles before that, though there were still a lot players using responsive yoyos in freestyles in the early-2000s.
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Allow me to play devils advocate but for a moment ?
Id just hazard a guess, the first non responsive yoyo was one of the earlier yoyo to be made. This likely presented a problem being they didnt want a unresponsive yoyo…not yet.
Think of the current crop of woodies showing up, most of them border on non response, and if Im not mistajken I think there might unresponsive bindable woodie(forgive if mistaken I am not totaslly up on all new designs)
I propose given the law of probabilites, and Im sure some other science I know nothing about, it would seem common sense that long ago someone came upon the idea of a long spinning unresponsive yoyo. Maybe he even figured out a bind who knows.
Just a thought of course.
As for the modern incarnation of a unresponsive from YoYO wiki…
“The Tom Kuhn silver bullet 2 was the first bearing yoyo that came back with the use of a response system.”(IIRC 83-84)
Theres more info out there you just got too google it.
Good luck,
Peace and Love.
PS:Yossarian, a super individual from what I have come to know through YYE, Y’s post appeared just as I was concocting mine, so to be clear, there is no argument here, its just information, nothing more. Just wanted to clarify in case of any confusion. Thanks all.
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You can still bind with responsive yoyos. That yoyo was probably semi-unresponsive.
I remember in like 1998 or 1999 I bought a Tigershark at a local hobby store. Up to that point pretty much all my play was on the Bee/Bee GT (GT might not have even been released yet). I returned it because it didn’t respond nearly as well as a Playmaxx yoyo with fresh brake pads. How the times have changed.