…and here’s just the video from the article he linked to.
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Ok Steve, i have a question specifically for you. What was the reaction when you first showed off 5A? How did your peers react to this new style of throwing?
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Dale Oliver swore loudly in the middle of judging that routine when I did that first aerial. 
The reaction was the same as the reaction to everything at the time: “Neat! What else?” Contextually, all hell was breaking loose and everyone was coming up with all kinds of crazy stuff all the time. Two yoyos connected at the slipknots, giant pegs sticking out of the sides, Terminator spikes, people were looping with bearings for the first time ever and greasing their yoyos with all kinds of crazy stuff, some toxic some not, it was total mayhem.
It took like three years for counterweight play to gain any real traction. For the first two years it was “that thing that Steve and Neff do” and in the third year it was “Hey, lemme try that”. Even when the original Freehand was released, the Renegade outsold it like 3:1. (Side note: which one held collectible value, suckers? LOL)
The reaction was positive, but not overwhelming. Took a while for it to catch on.
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really interesting thread, kinda rare and beautiful.
anyway, for today standard, what is a modern yoyoing? what defines it?
I mean, people do crazy new things with their yoyo every time, so since when that it’s considered modern?
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5a was definitely slow to catch fire… it took a handful of really talent players who stuck with it to show how much could really be done.
1a was exploding at about the same time, so lots of people were still focused on that.
5a was an ‘oh cool’ thing at first, until people started to really understand how incredibly different and versatile it could really be… then it took a bit for the masses to close the gap on the few who had really taken off with it.
4a was much the same way… a novelty trick for most people until a few dedicated/creative individuals showed us what could really be done.
3a I think just confused most people for a long time, it seemed so difficult that most people were scared off at even the “basics”… and then as with the other styles, a few people showed us how insane it could be.
As for “modern” yo-yo… I think there are a number of stages it went through, so it’s hard to say a particular year. You have the introduction of bearings, the big yo-yo boom in 98/99, the impact of internet videos that showed us all how much we sucked compared to the spindoctors, then the split off of all the styles along with unresponsive yo-yos becoming a good thing (instead of a broken yo-yo)… unresponsive play could be considered it’s own era as it pushed things really far really quickly.
Kyle
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I have never seen a better thread. I was planning on working in one full report about yoyos, from the materials to the history of yoyo and this really gave me the kick I needed to start writing up the history section. Great job guys!
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I stopped yoyo-ing and buying yoyo’s in 1999 (last purchase was a Cold Fusion which was also my first ball bearing yoyo). When I returned 13 years later my mind was blown. I was watching videos online getting back into it and I thought, “Where is the string? How is this stuff even possible? Am I looking at magic?”
I’ve since learned about the world of unresponsive play and all of the new sport versions and championship titles in the world of YoYo. The year 2000 seems to make sense on my clock / time capsule.
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Wasn’t the modern yoyo fairly new in 1999?
This is a great thread. Simply awesome, great to learn about this.
I was (still am) about Steve’s age in the late 90s and remember the “boom”… Still have 2 of the original Steve Brown Freehands, but have always been a low frills thrower. Just picked up the new unresponsive style in March of this year.
Thanks all that are sharing great stories!
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Great read… Don’t know if I’ll every get the vision of Dale Oliver shouting profanities out of my head…
I started yoyoing in the 90’s, but never took it very seriously until the past 2 years.
I’m more fascinated by how long it took for ball bearing yoyos to become a thing… I remember people musing about them back when I was still using a Duncan Butterfly, and while it was all dreaming, I just assumed they didn’t exist because it didn’t actually work in practice. Low and behold it sounds more like Duncan was trying to hold things back for a while to keep things accessible to kids.
Or was there something else holding it back? I could see ball bearing yoyos being considered “cheater” yoyos which would turn off most people from the idea. That was my (dumb) impression of it back when I started seeing stuff like the Fireball. (Which is transaxle, but still.) I feel like I missed out on a lot by completely ignoring the existence of yoyo competitions!
I digress - Maybe it was just a combination of many things. Anyone have an opinion on the topic?
Really great thread by the way!
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Reviving this incredible piece of history. Solid gold here.
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a decade later a thread revives that talked of days of old back in the before times when you had to write a letter sent by post to have a correspondence that even slightly mimics how we are communicating today.
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From what I know, earlier 3a tricks were more assist style tricks where one yoyo basically substituted the NTH for simple 1a tricks like brain twister or trapeze.
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Yeah but it’s not. And this thread isn’t gold. This topic gets discussed like every year… Why Necro? Seriously…
9 year old thread, people… Let dead dogs lie
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Daaamnnn easy on the salt, king. I LOVE that this thread was brought up again, I had never seen it and it was a great read. You have the inventor of an entire style of yoyoing give a first hand account about how all this stuff came about over 20 years ago. That is mf awesome, dude. People will look back on this thread down the road as a valuable source of info. There isn’t ENOUGH out there on the history of yoyo, and I think it should be preserved and shared as much as possible. I’ve been in and out of this forum for 14 years, and to the best of my memory, haven’t seen a similar thread. Who cares about the necro? lmao… Nothing wrong with great threads being brought back up every once and awhile. Thanks @basecramp!
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Necroing years-old threads is becoming a daily occurrence on here. If these topics were so important and crucial to the forums and history of yoyo, there would be an archive where they could be easily accessed.
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We all saw your thread on it, Necro Police. And great news buddy, there is actually an archive where they can be easily accessed. If you just head over to forums.yoyoexpert.com, and in the search bar you type something crazy (like a question even), maybe something like… “Where did modern yoyoing start?” And boom, this thread will pop up. Easy access baby, gotta love 2023.
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boring take tbh