it might be your first yoyo or that really nice yoyo or maybe just your favourite!
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thought this deserved its own reply: i have been yo-yoing for 5 months i learned the brent stole like 3 days ago and so far my yoyofactory skyline has been doing wonders it has a spin time of 1.5 minutes and its were all my best tricks were performed
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Not exactly sure what you mean by influential, since an inanimate object like a yoyo can only influence my play style or feelings to a small degree. I’ll take it to mean the most “important,” since I’m pretty sure that’s what you mean as well.
Having over 100 yoyos makes it incredibly hard to narrow this down, so I’ll keep it to a few of the most important.
General Yo Hatrick - everyone’s probably bored of this story by now, cause I always post about it, but my Hatrick was the first “high end” yoyo I ever bought. I got it directly from Ernie at Nationals in 2009, which started a long relationship of buying his latest throws at various contests from him, and strong love of General Yo throws. My best friend and I made a trip out of the contest, and we both bought our Hatricks together (and still have them) after trying out a bunch of yoyos at the contest and deciding that General Yo’s throws were by far the best. So much nostalgia associated with this thing, both due to the experiences surrounding that time, and the yoyo itself. At the time, and for awhile, it was the smoothest, best yoyo I’d ever thrown. This is one of about 3ish yoyos I’d absolutely never, ever let go of for any reason what so ever.
A-RT Grail - I love telling this story about obtaining my Grail, which was my “white whale” yoyo for the longest time.
Butter - My girlfriend got me this for our 2nd anniversary, and held the “number one favorite yoyo” spot for awhile… pretty sure it still does. I also got it right when I got back into throwing, and it showed me JUST how much better yoyos had gotten since 2013.
I definitely have more throws I “can’t live without” but these three are just on another level for me. Also, some honorable mentions: Panorama/Diorama (I currently use these the most), Free Solo and KLR (probably my all time most thrown yoyos), and Peak (nostalgia city baby).
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nice! in July i’m planning on getting the night moves x by iyoyo
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Freehand Zero
I remember in the early 2000s as a wee lad, being incredibly frustrated with trying to land the trapeze.
I thought the yoyo was holding me back.
Then my friend who get me into yoyoing; picked it up and proceeded to execute the sickest combo i had ever seen, with MY freehand zero.
I’ll never forget that learning experience. Taught me a lot about skill.
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The Bumblee GT had the greatest effect on me. It was the nineties and I was a teenager. I had already learned how to master some complex tricks on a standard Duncan Butterfly.
I upgraded to a Tornado 2 as my first bearing yoyo and later a Saber Raider.
Then came the Bumblebee GT. It just felt right. Perfect shape, perfect response, great visual look to it, and it was marketed very well.
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You got a solid set of eyeballs ed
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The Legendary Terrarian is my most influential yoyo because of Terraria. I put hundreds of hours into that game and it’s the only reason I knew One Drop even existed. Once I became a yoyoist, I knew I had to have one in my collection and, once I learned about the Saturday Market colorway, I knew I wanted one of those too.
About a year or so into my yoyo journey, fate intervened and OD dropped some SMLT’s on their site. I couldn’t resist the double temptation. Needless to say, I friggin love this thing.
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I’d have to say the One Drop VTWO. It has shaped my view of what the perfect yoyo design is (for me).
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The Civility was my first bi-metal and it is still my fav. It really helped me learn lots of tricks
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VSNYC Ti-Walker and Yoyorecreation Draupnir.
Both created that perfect moment where the clouds parted and the angels sang.
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Holy cow that Terrarian is gorgeous!
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No Jive was always that grail from my childhood that got me hooked and it also brought me to discover “Modern YoYoing” as well unresponsive/ responsive when I was rediscovering tricks.
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Day Tripper, unlocked Responsive play for me and I couldn’t be happier that I literally just stumbled upon the one off Saturday Market drop lol.
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Thats awesome. hmm wonder if anyone else has tatts witg yoyos
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My most influential yoyo was the Edge by Yoyo factory… Even though I no longer buy Yoyo factory stuff due to quality control and stick to boutique companies that take their time to make sure the yoyos the sell are premium quality! For instance One Drop, MonkeyfingeR, RSO, Atmos, Dressel Designs, General Yo, ILYY and so on… These companies take the time to do proper quality control and make sure your getting a product that makes you feel like your money was well spent and make you want to come back to buy more!
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YoyoJam Big Ben is what I learned to throw breakaways on. That o-ring response did not forgive if the string was misaligned in the gap. I remember the simplest stuff feeling incredibly complicated. Poorly landed trapeze and double or nothing resulted in that giant plastic yoyo smacking me in the hand, over and over again.
The Big Ben was also how I learned about modding and yoyo design. I shimmed the gap and cut the o-ring response flush to make it totally unresponsive. Later I’d mess around with adding rubber weight rings to rim-weight the Big Ben just like Shinichiro Ohnishi did.
You might recognize Ohnishi because it’s his name on the YYR Dreadnought. Before having the Dreadnought as his signature he was rocking a modded Big Ben in contests. That got me thinking more about yoyo design, too. And hey, YYR head Kengo was rocking the DreadnoughtG all the time, too. The Dreadnought is like a performance metal Big Ben.
I learned a lot with that giant plastic. Thanks Ben!
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It was the Bumblebee for me as well. Both the original but especially the GT. I didn’t keep a lot from my childhood but I still have both of those. Randomly coming across them while going through some stored stuff in late 2019 is what got me back into this hobby.
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Show me on the dolly where they hurt you?
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