YoYoMadness

December 8, 2003 7:52 AM

Japanese Yoyo championships. [7:17 wmv - with music]
posted by srboisvert (22 comments total)

So that's what happen to "YO"...MTV.
posted by thomcatspike at 8:00 AM on December 8, 2003

Wow, how do they keep the strings from knotting up especially w/ two, impressive. That was my problem as a kid trying out tricks that the string would become knotted add too the string being longer than my yo-yo height.
posted by thomcatspike at 8:11 AM on December 8, 2003

The double handed looping and Freehand stuff is amazing. And damnit I will master Offstring tricks in the new year.

Other names to google:
Johnnie DelValle and Brent Dellinger

(both have videos on Sector Y - but I won't direct link for respect of their bandwidth)

/yo-yo geek
posted by KnitWit at 8:26 AM on December 8, 2003

Amazing stuff. I can do the man on the flying trapeze quite comfortably, but that's it. Everything else I do is pretty much riff raff.
posted by freakystyley at 8:37 AM on December 8, 2003

Holy crapcakes... I wish I had that kind of free time.
posted by LoopSouth at 8:52 AM on December 8, 2003

Direct link to video.
posted by phatboy at 8:54 AM on December 8, 2003

Any time someone says your toys are expensive, send them to Infinite Illusions. Most people don't realize how much cash you can spend on a yoyo. :)

As for how they keep the string from getting knotted (at least, on on string single yoyo tricks), well, a lot of yoyos these days simply don't return on their own. You've got to bind the yoyo back (offstring winding method) to get it to come back. Of course, you can do all sorts of insane grinds/suicides/lacerations/slack/other new school tricks that way that you couldn't normally do with a reactive yoyo.

Self promote: Knot Theory, a not very well updated DB of yoyo tricks that will hopefully be completely retrofitted here sometime soon
posted by qDot at 8:59 AM on December 8, 2003

It always unnerves me when I'm not the only yoyoer in the room... How many MeFiers out there still yo?

(My yoyos)
posted by KnitWit at 9:18 AM on December 8, 2003

KnitWit, I pull out my 15-year-old ProYo about once every six months, just enough to make sure I can still pull off some loops and flying saucers. The double-handed stuff in the video makes me jealous... but these days, if I can find the free time to practice that much, it all goes into martial arts.
posted by Galvatron at 9:33 AM on December 8, 2003

wicked awesome.
posted by aaronscool at 10:13 AM on December 8, 2003

I've done a little bit of yoyoing, but I was never very good, and I don't practice. The best I can manage is rock the baby.
posted by Songdog at 11:02 AM on December 8, 2003

I watched this in slack-jawed amazement but couldn't help thinking that these kids should be out meeting girls or something. Nonetheless, impressive skills and a neatly edited little video.
posted by Tubes at 11:05 AM on December 8, 2003

< avid yoer here. i'm rarely caught without a yo-yo, usually there is in my pocket and a couple more live in my computer bag. i've been yoing for about sixteen years now and can't pull off anything that you saw in that video. a href="http://www.knot-theory.com/tricklib/tricklib_listtricks.php?trick_id=448">Kwyjibo is about the most complex trick I can handle. Man on the trapeeze is old hand, and I prefer sidestyle tricks to frontstyle. I'm even learning a few freehand tricks too.

That said, today's yo-yos are far better engineered than what I grew up with (I had a Tom Kuhn 3-in-1 for years). Back in my day we didn't have fancy ceramic bearings and adjustable string gaps. These days yo-yos can sleep for five-minutes without too much difficulty (I recommend the Mega SpinFaktor II from yo-yo jam). String tricks like those in the video are just progression that happens when you move from a fifteen second sleeper to a five to seven minute one.

Take a look on Google for Mark McBride (Author of the Yonomicon) and Steve Brown, both on the Duncan Yo-Yo team. Both of these guys are amazing.

This Christmas my wife tells me that she's got a stocking full of the new Hard Core yo-yos from Duncan. I'm excited.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:07 AM on December 8, 2003

I do sidestyle as well. It tends to be a bit safer for the people standing around me at the subway station... I do some VERY basic freehand and offstring as well, but my looping is a horrible risk to life and limb.

I prefer the Duncan Freehands or yoyojam's MiniMotrix - but I've been known to whip out my Cold Fusion Nucleus from time to time. And yea Brown and McBride are impressive, but it's great to see this kids taking the ball and running with it.

(there are only four yoyos on my desk at work for the moment)

and thanks for pointing out more yoyos... the fiancé won't be happy, but I will be.
posted by KnitWit at 11:46 AM on December 8, 2003

When I was in 7th grade yoyoing was the big craze in my school and I become pretty good (relatively speaking). I still pull out the yoyo occassionally, and can still do a few of the tricks I learned.
posted by blm at 11:50 AM on December 8, 2003

KnitWit,

My personal favorite yo-yos (since we're geeking out in here):

1. Mega SpinFaktor II (sleeps forever)
2. Variflex X-games Yo-yo (with Losi weight rims - designed by Steve Brown)
3. Original Henry's Viper (for offstring play)
4. Tom Kuhn Pocket Rocket (cause it's tiny)
5. Aerobie Aerospin (nice on the fingers)
posted by DragonBoy at 12:03 PM on December 8, 2003

I loved the Viper, mainly because it bounces off of things instead of breaking them... (Unlike the Freehand 1 :) )...

My favs are probably the FH v1, YYJ Matrixx (World's uglist pogs!), and Night Moves.... I'm hopefully getting a Hitman for christmas, I hear good things about it.

The Yonomicon was great, unfortunatly there's really no way to chart newer tricks in it. I've thrown around the idea of updating YFT ([CS geek]A grammar for yoyo tricks, the yonomicon presents an NFA for transversing the grammar. [/CS geek]) with other people before... I've also got a very small portion of a 3-D yoyo trick viewer/simulator built, but free time is very, very short right now.

My fav video has got to be TGL Experiment 4 w/ Doc Popular. Get it here. (20-30MB, MPEG). It's not the usual "kid in front of boring background doing unintelligable things with yoyo to bad music", and well, Doc Pop is the shit anyways. :) SAGE has a new vid capture card (26MB, MPEG) probably still ranks as one of my fav vids, too. It's an old video, but he's so god damn smooth about all his whips, the video just screams "pimp" (as does Rick Wyatt yoyoing on stage w/ Body Count, but my poor server has taken quite a beating hosting that one before :) )
posted by qDot at 12:38 PM on December 8, 2003

Remember the Simpsons episode when the all-star yo-yo team comes to the school? On the DVD commentary for that episode, one of the staff remarks that the yo-yo industry is designed to cycle in and out of fad-dom every few years. To instigate each spread of the new round of hipness, they send out such teams to elementary schools, according to my Simpsons sources. Anyone know anything about this?
posted by UKnowForKids at 12:54 PM on December 8, 2003

I can't imagine the yoyo industry would like dips in the 'trendiness' of their industry. I think they'd rather yoyos were continually hip (like video games or the ilk)...

I guess it's just the yoyo market's nature to go up and down. (sorry)
posted by KnitWit at 1:26 PM on December 8, 2003

UKnowForKids: Yup that definitely happens. Just check out the Yoyoing.com message boards at http://www.yoyoing.com/news/

Half the posts are "When do you think the next boom will be?!"/"The next boom is coming soon!!!!"/etc...

Last *big* boom that I know of was the release of the Brain auto-clutching system in the mid 90's (the yoyo that sleeps and automatically returns).

Most toys cycle like this though.
posted by qDot at 2:21 PM on December 8, 2003

qDot and KnitWit,

Over the past 15 years or so the Yo-yo market has sold about 10 million yo-yos in the US every year until 1999. In 1999 the figure shot up to around 100 million and has been in decline ever since. Last years figures are estimated at about 23 million yo-yos sold, so it is still a healthy number.

The yo-yo market does have it's ups and downs but the overall popularity worldwide is incredible. In Europe, Australia and Japan yo-yos sell well every year. In Iraq yo-yos were known to be used as weapons (according to sources inside the Bush administration). Every ten or fifteen years there is another boom in the industry. In the late 80s the boom was around the clutch yo-yo (from Yomega). The last boom can be credited to the more advanced bearing yo-yos that sleep forever and promotions at the WARP tour and X-game style events.

The concept of the traveling yo-yo demonstrator goes back to the 1920s when Donald Duncan sent out teams to sell his yo-yos. Duncan also came up with the 4-wheel hydraulic brake, the Good Humor ice cream-on-a-stick, and the modern parking meter and made a fortune for Hearst in the 30s with Duncan contests. The man was a genius.

BTW, I've been researching yo-yos for books, hense the schoolin...
posted by DragonBoy at 2:53 PM on December 8, 2003

Who do they think they're kidding? I could totally see the strings.
posted by NortonDC at 5:33 PM on December 8, 2003