So I was reading the book “Every Trick In The Book” by Charlie Dancey and in his section about yoyos, he said this: “A Yo-Yo as you know perfectly well, is a toy that seems to create an unstoppable craze every few years and then vanishes back into near obscurity only to re-emerge at a later time in history.”
I know that the first yoyo boom happened in about 1931-1932? because the first WYYC was in 1932, and the second one was in the 60s, the third was in the 90s, but was there an actual one in the 2000s? or does anyone have a guess as to when the next one will be?
A boom is an explosion of interest that comes and goes pretty quickly. What was the cultural impetus for each prior boom? What precipitated/caused each of them? Are those same forces aligned (or aligning) again now? Or is there something completely new/different that we expect to be the precipitating force this time around?
I’d like to know! I think the people into it hardcore keep being into it but 98% of the people really into it move onto something else in a year or less. I think a lot of factors come into play for a boom to happen. Availability in regular stores is one thing but of course the Imperial and Butterfly (Walmart) and Butterfly XT (at Target) will always be around. There’s so many other toys vying for attention though. A few celebrities yoyoing could make a lot of people become interested because they’d make yoyos seem cool.
Indeed. The fact that those Duncan mainstays are perpetually in stores does not in and of itself precipitate a boom, though it may help fuel one by seeing to it that interested buyers have an easy way to satisfy their curiosity. But I’m interested in figuring out what will ignite the explosion rather than what will merely fuel it to keep it burning. Celebrity involvement might be it, but it would have to be a pretty popular celebrity and it would have to be in a context beyond something as simple (and inconsequential) as a social media blip that disappears in less than a day.
Maybe a “boom” should be filed in a “Who Cares?” bin. I think we are all curious because we wonder when our pretty oddball hobby will become cool to the masses and when we’ll see yoyos at mall kiosks (do many actual toy stores exist anymore?) and to try out the mass market yoyos that will probably be cheap knock offs of quality models but…I lost my train of thought. My Walmart sold all of the Pro Zs and moves Imperials and Butterflys so people are buying yoyos but it’s hard to tell to whom because most people I see standing or walking around are looking at their phones. Smartphones and mini tablets are to kids and young adults what yoyos were to kids and young adults during yoyo booms. That’s my opinion anyway.
Well, I sent yo-yos a few months ago to my contact at Epic Games, and asked him to lobby internally for a yo-yo emote in Fortnite. I’m optimistic it will happen, they added a juggling emote a while ago too!
now that the internet is a key part of the entire yoyoing community and how it spreads i think there will be another boom in the next decades, maybe years.
What’s funny is that in 2017 when I was in 6th grade me & my friends started yo-yoing at recess & actually accumulated a large amount of spectators. We performed at the talent show & soon after everyone was throwing cheap magicyoyos & asking me & the guys how to tie a slipknot. Also, this was 2017, in the midst of the fidget spinner craze.
I can’t really predict if or when there’ll be another nationwide yoyo craze, but starting one in your community or with friends is pretty easy.
Booms are really just describing fads. The state of yo is amazingly strong right now if you consider the availability of great throws and the on line communities sharing tricks and stuff like that.
There will never be a ‘boom’ with $100 yo-yos, but this is a golden age of yoing, all things considered, and that’s better than a boom that pushes out warehouses full of cheap yoyos destined for the junk drawer.
I think quality of a cheap product will also affect a possible boom. 5 years ago I bought a dozen cheap Duncan yoyo’s to give to kids in our program. They were horrible and did nothing to get the kids interested. If I had known to pay a bit more for something like a YYF One it would have been a different story.
Not sure if another boom will happen for a while, even if yoyoing has changed over the past several years. I remember the days when you could walk into Walmart or Target and there would be a small section of yoyos, being Duncan, and Yomega. They seemed to hold their place in stores until shortly after the Fast 201 went mainstream (was the first time I ever heard of Yoyofactory).
In this day and age too, fads come and go quick. We all saw how fast Fidget Spinners became the rage and suddenly out of nowhere, were no longer “cool.”
This is another issue when it comes to “the next yoyo boom”. With the rise of the internet, trends have become more and more ephemeral rather than lasting, and realistically a yoyo boom in current times would probably fizzle out just as fast as fidget spinners. Most hobbies that are worth anything remain fringe, and booms of any kind are usually associated with tragic falling outs. A yoyo boom now could possibly wound the current yoyo community to the point of being endangered upon the fallout.
In my personal experience ive shared my hobby with a few millenials who remember the 90s yoyo boom, and few if any have any interest. It was a fad, and remains in the past. The current community isn’t entirely on life support, which is good, but expect it to be a fringe community for the long term (atm at least). Im actually a little surprised that the invent of unresponsive yoyos has yet to trigger a yoyo boom, but the fact that it didn’t speaks for itself; yoyo isn’t ready to become a trend when digital technology is seeing its huge boom. Once kids become tired of tech it may have a chance, but realistically this is a long time off. As a millennial, unresponsive yoyos being ignored is still a shocker to me. Throwing long sleepers used to be a huge thing to us, but I guess the majority of us have grown up and would rather sample microbrews.