I first came across the Yo-Spin while updating the Yoyo Archive Instagram page. Intrigued, I reached out to Blue Orange Toys, and they sent me a box with six: an original, a glow-in-the-dark, and four of their metallic colors. The Yo-Spin isn’t really a yo-yo. It’s a plastic disc with a rubber bumper. The center…
I first came across the Yo-Spin while updating the Yoyo Archive Instagram page. Intrigued, I reached out to Blue Orange Toys, and they sent me a box with six: an original, a glow-in-the-dark, and four of their metallic colors. The Yo-Spin isn’t really a yo-yo. It’s a plastic disc with a rubber bumper. The center…
Small yoyo that feels rounder than it feels tubular, despite nearly being a 1:1 spec ratio (if the yoyo was a full-sized 56mm dia, it’d have a ~53mm width) Edition tends to make good yoyos. This is one of them. Didn’t expect to like it because undersized yoyos are always “omg it’s so good it…
Aroundsquare is well know for a lot of skill toys: begleri, deadeyes, knucklebones, chetki, and more. They’ve never done a yo-yo, until now. The Not Machine is their first of hopefully many throw offerings. It’s a wooden fixed-axle yoyo made from either maple or purpleheart. Both have a birch axle, and a copper “Aroundsquare” plaquette…
I heard this thing was coming and was very excited. I liked the OG Adrenaline and sorta always wished I hadn’t skipped on it. Same goes for the NorAdrenaline. It just sorta always worked out that I didn’t have one in my hands. I saw the white-on-white protos and instantly wanted one. Then the colorways…
This is a review of the PC version of the obscura, not the Pom version. Dude, this yoyo rips. Genuinely. I watched Dis pretty distantly through their first two releases; didn’t love the Sibyl or the Anima, neither were my thing. I liked how both felt, but I felt like they made compromises for that playfeel. Other…
I wrote an entire video for this yoyo. The script is fully done; I could’ve just posted it to the YYE forums as a review and gone next. The only reason I didn’t is that editing and recording are a miserable process for me right now and will probably only get more stressful going into…
Hideo Ishida Hideo Ishida (石田 英雄), also known as ヒデヲ or “hero”, is a Japanese 5A (counterweight) competitor. Local reporting places his hometown in Sanyo-Onoda, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and the JYYF results list him under Tokyo. He placed at the World Yo-Yo Contest in 5A from 2010, finishing fifth in 2010, fourth in 2012, 2013 and…
Takuma Yamamoto Takuma Yamamoto is a Japanese 2A (looping) competitor. He won the 2A division at the World Yo-Yo Contest in 2008, 2013, 2014 and 2019, making him a four-time World Champion. He placed fourth in 2011, second in 2012 and 2018, and third in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Retailer copy credits him as a…
Shu Takada Shu Takada (高田 柊) is a Japanese 2A (looping) competitor and performer, born on 7 October 1996 and from Shizuoka Prefecture according to his own profile. He won the 2A division at the World Yo-Yo Contest in 2012, finished second in 2013 and 2015, and then won three straight world titles in 2016,…
Takuma Inoue Takuma Inoue is a Japanese 5A (counterweight) competitor. He placed third in 5A at the 2008 World Yo-Yo Contest, won the division in 2009, and was second in 2011 and 2012. He won 5A at the Japan National Yo-Yo Contest in 2014 and 2017. At the 2017 World Yo-Yo Contest he won 5A…
Before every wide-gap, silicone-padded, center-tracking throw came a simpler proposition: a player could make the yo-yo in hand do something its maker had not planned. Yo-yo modding is the long history of that proposition—part repair bench, part laboratory, part folk engineering. The Player as Tuner Players have always adjusted yo-yos. Fixed-axle throwers changed string, worked…
National Yo-Yo and Bo-Lo Co, Ltd. was a Canadian maker of wooden yo-yos. The YoYo Wiki gives its yo-yo years as 1960 to 1969, while the Yo-Yo Museum places sales of its Toronto-made Olympic and Pro Tournament models in 1968-77. The wiki lists three models: the Jeweled Satellite, Olympic and Pro Tournament. Its founding year…
ilinx Toys (doing business as Hollywood Modern Yoyos) is an independent yoyo brand based in Hollywood, California, founded by Ross Levine. The company focuses on thoughtful, theory-driven design—prioritizing flow-arts playability, off-axis capability, and everyday carry—over competition-spec conformity. ilinx is also the home of the Kill Your Yoyo podcast, a bi-weekly conversation series about yoyo improvisation…
Variflex is a California sporting-goods company, founded in 1977, best known for skateboards and in-line skates. In the late 1990s it teamed with Team Losi on yo-yos and an instructional video starring Steve Brown. Its models were the Variflex Pro, made in two shapes, and the X-Games. Brown says friction with Variflex contributed to his…
Peter Fish is an Australian company that a 2003 trademark record places in Mt Kuring-gai, New South Wales. The YoYo Wiki says it began in 1984, a date not independently confirmed, and describes its yo-yos as made in China by the same maker as Yomega. Documented models include the Dominator and Luminator, and the Smithsonian…
Team Losi was primarily a radio-control vehicle maker. In 1998 it hired Steve Brown to design yo-yos during the boom, according to Brown’s own account on the Yo-Yo Museum site. Its first yo-yos were sold as Revolution Yo-Yos, followed by Team Losi’s own Da Bomb, Cherry Bomb and Grim Sleeper, and it also supplied two…
Abbe Toys was an Australian maker of the Black Mamba yo-yos, which were imported to the US during the late-1990s boom. The Yo-Yo Museum documents the Black Mamba, whose auto-return Yo-Matic mechanism was licensed to Tomy for the Japanese Screw Ball. The company later rebranded to PhatYo. Its founding year, city and current status are…
This is a project that I’ve been working on for a few years now, but with protos now in the wild and getting shared around at a few clubs, I figured it was time to actually talk about it. The Cerasus started as a simple vision, simply wanting a large diameter yoyo that actually had…
As memtioned above, I purchased the ‘Merica Edition. I also opted for the “Delivery In Person”. “The author will take a paperback copy of the book to the gun range, shoot a hole in, then take it to a burger joint where he will eat the largest burger on the menu with fries and get…
Later in the thread he references this article, which is an excellent read, followed up by this amazing video. Overall, some amazing yo-yo history here!
Popular online yo-yo reviewer, Gingie, has released a video documentary about the CLYW Chief. “Super proud to finally be able to say this The Chief Documentary is done, at long last! After nearly two years of work, it’s my magnum opus and the single longest video on my channel. This video explores the lead up…
