Hello ppl, (yey! for my first post)
A week ago I sent Dr.Yo-yo an e-mail explaining my point of view regarding a possible Yoyo Boom and hoping for having some experienced feedback about the subject. For some reason, maybe because he’s to busy, the Doc didn’t replyed my e-mail. Either way, here you have it, my point of view on boom :). Don’t forget that I am not from the US, so here we only got one yoyo craze .
Well, since the beginning of the practice of this hobby of mine that I started to make some questions around it and talked/showed to friends the new-school yo-yoing. Everyone I talk to remembers the Coca-Cola yoyo craze that got us in the 90s, everyone says that they can do hop-the-fence, walk the dog and all; but when they see this new way of yo-yoing they get really amazed, and even for some of my friends I was able to have them to buy some yoyos and, unfortunately for a little time, they experienced, or try to experience, the fun of yo-yoing. What led to me to question myself: “Would this kind of ‘drop of the hobby’ happen if, in some way, a craze was installed?”.
Based on that question, a lot more questions followed: “Where it’s going to be the next Boom?”, “Am I going to be ready for it?”, “Do we need a Boom?”, “Do we want a Boom?” and of course “Will the Boom going to ever happen?”. I’ll talk about some of them in as I write it down for you, but for now let’s stick with the first one that maybe is the most important. Since I’ve began yo-yoing that I tried to find the answers for this question, even when I find some information regarding the yoyo craze pointing that “it” comes in intervals of 21 years (don’t remember where I found this information) which in fact hits the mark for me on right now and maybe the next 3 years or so. I noticed some other factors that may be implying that a boom is coming, and I’ll try to explain my point of you about them to you:
. Financial Crisis: There are some people that defend that with the crisis that we are facing the parents have to turn to less expensive toys to give to their children. Since the videogames are a “little” more expensive and get dull after a few days, the yoyo can be of “infinite” fun for years and by that a good buy from the parents/relatives to their kids.
. Jensen Kimmit’s World Win went viral: This one took me by surprise. How could a Yoyo world freestyle went viral on the Internet? It never happened before, why now? It was the first time for me that this occurred, I never saw a yoyo video like this before I got into yo-yoing, still there it was: Jensen showing his skills on loads and loads of blogs and websites.
. First National Spanish Championship: For the first time in history it’s going to be held a National Yoyo Championship in Spain. That means a lot, it means that in Europe the community is evolving and growing.
. More shops of yo-yoing: Yeah! They’re popping up all right!
. A comedy sketch involving yo-yoing: Strasser showed all the yoyo community that it doesn’t take that much to popularize the skill-toy, you just need to knock on the right doors;
. Yomega entering the Portugal market this year: I know it’s strange for me to point this out, but I’ve never seen a yoyo commercial before in my life; for the first time some networks of national TV played Yomega commercials between kid’s shows. Even more weird was seeing them available at the local hypermarket.
I let my conclusion on this one when I try to answer to the last question.
As for the next question “Am I going to be ready for it?”, I guess the answer is simple: “I will be ready as I am now”, just keeping playing my yoyo and showing, and maybe teaching, this art to other people that might be interested in it.
“Do we need a Boom?” - “Yes.” and “No.”
Yes, because it will create more competition between players, it will get more diversity in products available to the consumer and it will require more innovation in the industry, which in general it sounds pretty ok for all of us, right? Yes, but no; when we get something that exposed where everyone wants to make part of it, there will be others that just want to make some profit around it and then you’ll get some “noise” around the answer.
“Yes, but…”: there will be more players and users of this skill-toy and for that you’ll get a lot of people that don’t understand the pre-established community and may be disrespectful in a lot of different ways to the fellow yoyoers; more diversity of products may inject some lower-quality products in the market making it more easy for new comers to ditch the hobby if they have a bad first experience with them. In the end you may get a lot of innovation, but in the worst-case scenario I fear for a Patents War. I know I am being a little dramatic on the last one but just take a moment to think about the Patent Wars that go today between Google, Apple, Microsoft, Motorola and so on; now you just need to imagine that context in another successful industry and you get the picture. Oh, We already got on bit of the picture not too long ago, didn’t we?
And we ask very proudly: “Do we want a Boom?”, and some will say “No” and the rest will raise their eyebrows. Let me explain, for some, and unfortunately this included me for a while, they think that what they do is uncommon, special and different and if the industry would get popular then what they’ll do would be less cool and distinguished as it is today; so for some, the part that the yo-yoing is treated from the eyes of outsiders as something as a gift and something that lets you shine in the middle of the crowd is what really matters.
So for the last and maybe important one “Will the Boom going to ever happen?” my answer for this one is “Yes, but we are already in it”. No, I am not saying that every kid is throwing a Coca-Cola yoyo outside; I am saying that we are going to stay as we are today, with some highs and lows but most of the time the community will be well defined as it is today. What I am trying to say is that we evolved so much and we are so good and so many right now that I think we may compare to one of the early stages of the Skate and Surf community; you know that they are there and what they do, but you know that there is no craze. I guess that by saying this I gave my answer to the first question as well.
Well this went from a post to a full article now. Hope to have some feedback from all of you, took me a while to start to write this but I needed to share this with the community. Oh… and for the record, no, I am no philosopher or some crazy sociologist, I am just an average working guy that usually like to question the stuff that happens in his life.
Thanks for reading this
-Joel Oliveira