I never could get into the 1to1 or the Aitch. Not for me in the slightest. Good throws, love Side Effects, couldn’t get into the play feel of either.
I was also subverted by the Shinobi. It’s a monster of a trimetal, but it didn’t have much staying power in the collection.
That kinda seems to be the general sentiment for the 1to1 and Aitch from what I’ve seen, kind of love it or hate it throws. The Shinobi is surprising though! It seems so unique.
CLYW Chief when it was the thing many years ago. I typically really dislike V shapes but the Chief has a very comfortable feel in the hand relative to the vast majority of Vs out there and I ended up owning a bunch of them.
Draupnir. When it came out, I felt like anything competition oriented $120+ at that time was pretty exceptional so I thought the Draupnir hype was ridiculous. I wasn’t ready for how absurdly objectively better it was than every other yoyo I had ever owned once I finally bought one. You’d have a hard time convincing me that there has been a more revolutionary yoyo than the Draupnir since its release.
Protostar was a yoyo that I expected nothing from when it was new as plastics weren’t well represented like they are now and yoyos being $100+ was the norm. I didn’t like it much to begin with either. Maybe the first one I had just sucked but I ended up with other ones at different points and they played fantastic.
CLYW Ditch that I impulse bought on that other site when they had 25% off recently. I expected very very little from such a small yoyo and it way over delivered. A fantastic little throw.
FH One AL. Didn’t expect much given the least expensive colors are $50 retail and my experience with Duncan metal yoyos in the past (admittedly not recent models or any high tier models) has been disappointing, but the FH1 will always be one of my favorite yoyos so I wanted to try it out. It instantly became one of my all time favorite yoyos and one that I’ll never sell. It is just such a pleasure to play.
Love hearing these varying opinions about different types of yoyos 
it’s funny how preconceived ideas about brands/shapes can be proven wrong by one particular model eh? I’ve tried to break myself out of habits like that but it’s so hard to let go of old habits.
I would love to try a draupnir, still haven’t gotten around to picking one up. They were out of my price range when they released and then I took a big break from yoyoing for many years, but it definitely seems like it shaped the course of high end yoyos a lot. It kinda set the standard for high performance throws from then onward. And it seems like so many still draw parallels to it today, which is pretty amazing.
