Walt Disney Studios is much different than Disney Land. Disney Land being an actual theme park, and Walt Disney Studios being the entity behind all of Disney. Also ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ is so specific to a niche hobby that I find it hard to believe most people liking it are not involved with yoyoing in some form. Japan has a huge populations as well.
I also disagree with it taking years to become a yoyo’er. I think someone that has picked up a yoyo and played for two weeks going through Andre’s tutorials with the goal to continue on and become better is a yoyoer. But then again the definition is so loose. As mentioned earlier, it isn’t like a Grand Master Chess player who has attained that position by a points and win/loss ratio. It is just a general term that we use as yoyo players ourselves.
The term community can be debated all you want. It just depends on what connotation you decide works best for this situation.
As I am finding out, the “yoyo community” will never have accurate numbers. That’s OK, neither does the US Census, which does it’s “song and dance” every 10 years. The reason is worse for the yoyo community, which is so bad, we can never get even reasonable estimates.
1: I am learning that most people are “closet yoyo players”. This is some sort of “dark secret” that must be hidden or else they might be branded a freak or nerd or dork or something. I made an announcement on YYE about the ProZ’s releasing at TRU(before they were at YYE), and that store went from 8 FULL PEGS(minus what I bought) to being nearly completely decimated within 24 hours(I went back the next day to complete my collection with additional colors), clearly, people are reading and/or lurking but not participating or interacting with others.
2: While contests can bring out big numbers, at least the contests I go to, the participants come from around the globe. Contests are not a great gauge of the “community”, as we’re getting those who just flat out enjoy this activity showing up.
3: Some people just aren’t down with social interaction. That’s too bad. They need to get out more often.
The reality is that we can safely say that world-wide, there are tens of thousands of players. 10K? 90K? Who knows. However, we need to kind of keep the numbers limited to those that regardless of their ability to venture outdoors and/or their purchase habits, are at least messing around with the yoyo in more than just a passing fancy manner. I feel this may push the number into the millions.
I was doing sound for an anime convention, and this guy thought he was “god’s gift to the ladies” apparently with his Duncan Limelight and gravity pulling it. I guess he was expecting he’d be the only guy with a yoyo there, which in all honesty would normally be a legitimate line of thought. I had my DM2 on me and said “that’s neat, what else can you do” Turns out nothing. I told him if he wanted I could show him how to do a few other simple tricks that I knew he could do since he could gravity pull. I showed him how to forward pass and at least how to do 2 loops, even Around the World but he couldn’t handle it. I showed him some picture trucks, trapeze, trapeze and bro, double or nothing and plastic whip on my DM2.
Odd, he didn’t take out his yoyo the rest of the time. Such a shame. It seems that they’ll put hundreds of hours into an ugly costume, but to put any effort into a skill toy is just “beyond their ability to comprehend”. It’s no different than this cosplay obsession except it takes up less space and is more appropriate in more locations. I mean, you show up to do your grocery shopping in your Cosplay stuff and people look at you oddly. Show up with a yoyo and people don’t mind so much!
I think with this kendama push, we’re seeing 3 basic types here. We’re looking at those who are just getting into skill toys and want to be part of a trend and are starting from nothing, many of whom will drop out, same as with yoyo, but some will progress. Then there are those who get into kendama and want more challenge from other skill toys, and it seems Yoyo is a natural progress to and from kendama for some reason, making them cross-over players. Then there’s the opposite, where it’s people who enjoy the yoyo who are looking for a challenge from kendama.
The reality is there are millions of yoyos that have been unceremoniously dumped and thrown out by people who for whatever reason didn’t enjoy this. Most of these are usually Duncan Imperials and Butterflys, but with the new(er) brands such as YYJ and YYF, the variety of disposed of and unloved yoyos is becoming more diverse. These are from people who just didn’t get it. We can’t expect any one skill toy to be a “one size fits all/most”. Millions will enter, few will continue on.
The community is perhaps larger than we realize, but of course smaller than we’d like it to be. The most important thing is those of us who have decided “we really enjoy this and are going to stick with it”, do keep at it. We need to hang onto skill toys as a viable option for self-entertainment and self improvement. I’m not anti-video game, but we do need to get people up and away from their electronic entertainment and connect to how people use to play. Play has no age requirement or limit.