A-RT, Provocation, and Controversy in Modern Yo-Yoing

One of modern yo-yoing’s most influential boutique brands built its identity on creativity, irreverence, and provocation. Eventually, the controversy surrounding A-RT became as difficult to ignore as the yo-yos themselves.

A-RT occupies an unusual place in modern yo-yo history.

Founded in Canada by World Yo-Yo Champion Jensen Kimmitt and influential player and designer Charles Haycock, the company produced some of the most distinctive yo-yos of its era. Models such as the Grail, Junior, Sparrow, Furn, Inhaler, and Spincel rejected the relentless pursuit of maximum competition performance in favor of personality, unusual proportions, and feel.

The company itself was presented in much the same way.

A-RT’s product descriptions, videos, packaging, social posts, and artwork often felt less like conventional marketing and more like an ongoing art project. The humor could be surreal, deliberately abrasive, or intentionally difficult to interpret.

For many players, that was exactly the attraction.

It also became the source of a series of controversies that gradually changed how part of the community viewed the company.

For years, A-RT’s refusal to behave like a normal yo-yo company was part of its appeal. Eventually, the same refusal became part of the problem.

2016: A Controversy Before the First Throw

The first dispute surrounding A-RT was not about politics or offensive imagery.

It was about the name.

When Charles Haycock announced A Return Tops, commonly abbreviated A-RT or A/RT, another small company was already operating under the name Amplified Return Tops, frequently shortened to ART.

The similarity was noticed immediately.

In an April 2016 YoYoExpert discussion, Amplified founder LaMonte Patterson said he had already spoken with Haycock about the issue. According to Patterson, Haycock did not believe the names would cause meaningful confusion.

The disagreement never became a documented legal dispute. It remained a question of branding, courtesy, and community norms.

But it set an early precedent.

A-RT did not appear particularly interested in changing course simply because some members of the community objected.

The Yo-Yos Were Different

None of the later controversy erases A-RT’s influence as a yo-yo company.

The Grail in particular became emblematic of a renewed appreciation for comfortable organic shapes at a time when competition designs were becoming increasingly wide, angular, and optimized for stability.

Other releases experimented with high walls, lighter weights, narrow profiles, and intentionally unusual geometry.

A-RT helped reinforce the idea that a modern premium yo-yo did not need to be designed primarily around contest performance.

Even players who later became deeply critical of the company have often continued to praise the yo-yos themselves.

The central contradiction of A-RT is simple: people who wanted nothing more to do with the brand could still love the objects it created.

2022: The Inhaler

The release of the Inhaler in 2022 marked a significant turning point.

Early discussion focused on the yo-yo itself: its high walls, weight distribution, unusual feel, and divisive design.

Then images associated with a special edition began circulating.

One piece of packaging featured an armed anime-style character alongside the phrase:

“MAKE SCHOOL SHOOTERS NYAAAAAAAAAAAA AGAIN.”

The reaction on YoYoExpert was immediate.

Critics argued that A-RT had crossed the line between absurdist or offensive humor and making a joke from real-world mass violence. Some owners said the controversy altered how they felt about the yo-yo itself.

One player publicly sold his Inhaler despite describing it as a fun yo-yo, explaining that the controversy surrounding it had soured the experience.

The episode showed that A-RT’s branding was no longer something every customer could separate from the product.

A Claim That Should Be Treated Carefully

A later allegation suggested that the name Inhaler itself was intended as a reference to George Floyd.

The Yoyo Archive has not found sufficiently strong primary or contemporary evidence establishing that interpretation as A-RT’s intent.

It should therefore not be presented as established fact.

The school-shooter imagery is directly documented. The alleged meaning of the Inhaler name is not.

The Andrew Tate Association

The Inhaler backlash soon became intertwined with another issue.

During 2022, members of the yo-yo community began discussing social-media material connecting people associated with A-RT to internet personality Andrew Tate.

Contemporary forum discussions refer to a visit to Tate’s property and social posts connecting members of A-RT’s circle with him. Some of the original social-media material has since become difficult to verify directly, leaving forum posts and screenshots as the primary surviving record.

The association mattered because Tate was already widely known for misogynistic rhetoric and subsequently became the subject of serious criminal allegations in multiple jurisdictions. Tate denies wrongdoing, and allegations against him should not be treated as convictions.

For A-RT’s critics, however, the issue was broader than Tate himself.

A-RT had deliberately blurred the line between company, artists, friends, personalities, and brand culture from the beginning.

When that culture attracted criticism, separating the actions of individuals from the identity of A-RT became much more difficult.

A-RT’s personality was one of its products. That made it difficult to argue that personality no longer mattered when customers disliked what they saw.

When the Forum Became Part of the Story

The controversy then spread beyond A-RT itself.

As the Inhaler discussion on YoYoExpert expanded into conversation about A-RT’s behavior and associations, some posts were removed or restricted by moderators.

That created a new argument: should information about a manufacturer’s conduct be considered relevant to a yo-yo discussion?

On October 5, 2022, forum member Spence created a thread titled “Wrongful, blatant forum censorship (and a larger discussion about A-RT as a company)”.

The argument was that YoYoExpert served not only as a discussion board but also as an informal historical record and purchasing resource. Removing criticism of a manufacturer could therefore prevent future buyers from understanding why some players had chosen not to support it.

YoYoExpert owner André Boulay eventually intervened. Deleted material was restored, and Boulay explained that moderation had not been intended to protect A-RT while also noting the difficulty of managing contentious subjects on an all-ages forum.

The thread was eventually locked.

But the material survived.

That matters because much of A-RT’s controversial history occurred on platforms such as Instagram, where posts and stories can disappear. The forum discussions are now part of the historical record.

2025: Spincel

After the 2022 backlash, A-RT could have adopted a more cautious public identity.

It did not.

In July 2025, A-RT released A-RT Presents ~ SPINCEL ~ a Yoyo Video, a roughly ten-minute release video mixing yo-yo footage with scripted skits.

The name itself generated discussion.

The visual presentation drew heavily from the Splinter Cell video-game series, offering an obvious explanation for Spincel. At the same time, community members immediately noticed that “Spin-cel” could also be read as a reference to the term incel.

Without an explicit statement establishing that second meaning as intentional, it should be treated as interpretation rather than fact.

The video’s humor also drew criticism, with community discussions citing racial and gender-related material in its skits.

The AR-15 Spincel

A later Spincel variant became known among collectors as the AR-15 Spincel.

Community records place its announcement on August 28, 2025.

That was one day after the August 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, where a gunman fired into a school Mass, killing two children and injuring others.

There is no evidence that A-RT timed the product around the shooting. The timing appears to have been coincidental.

But for critics who remembered the Inhaler’s school-shooter imagery, another firearm-themed release arriving immediately after a school shooting reinforced an existing perception of the brand.

What might once have been dismissed as an isolated piece of tasteless humor now looked, to some players, like a pattern.

Provocation as Part of the Brand

A-RT has always operated differently from a conventional sporting-goods company.

Its product copy can resemble poetry, manifestos, private jokes, or deliberate nonsense. Its videos often favor atmosphere and personality over straightforward marketing.

That ambiguity is essential to understanding both the company’s appeal and its controversies.

Irony gives creators room to move between sincerity and joke. Something can be offensive, absurd, satirical, intentionally tasteless, or simply misunderstood.

For years, many A-RT fans were happy to grant the company that ambiguity.

Repeated controversies changed that relationship.

The most important change may not have been A-RT becoming more provocative. It was part of the audience becoming less willing to assume that every provocation was harmless.

Timeline

The Archival Problem

A-RT also illustrates one of the difficulties of documenting modern yo-yo history.

Important parts of the culture now happen through Instagram stories, disappearing posts, private accounts, Discord conversations, and videos that can be deleted without warning.

Forums are often what remain.

A casual conversation from 2016 can become one of the best surviving records of a company’s origins. A moderation fight from 2022 can preserve references to social posts that no longer exist.

But surviving community discussion still needs to be treated carefully.

A forum post documents what a person said or remembered. It does not automatically prove every allegation contained within it.

Screenshots can demonstrate that an image circulated without necessarily establishing its creator’s intent.

Repeated claims do not become facts simply because they are repeated.

For the Archive, the distinction is important:

Preserve the controversy. Do not preserve rumor as fact.

Legacy

A-RT’s place in modern yo-yo history is complicated precisely because the company mattered.

Kimmitt and Haycock helped create some of the most recognizable boutique yo-yos of their generation. Their designs pushed against the assumption that technological optimization was the only meaningful form of progress.

A-RT made yo-yos with personality.

It also built a company with personality.

The naming dispute with Amplified showed an early willingness to ignore criticism. The Inhaler packaging demonstrated how far A-RT’s humor could extend into subjects many players considered indefensible. The Tate association turned questions of taste into questions of values. The YoYoExpert dispute demonstrated that some players considered those issues directly relevant to purchasing decisions. The Spincel era showed that controversy had not fundamentally changed the company’s approach.

Some players continue to separate the objects from their creators.

Others cannot.

Both responses matter when documenting the history of a boutique company whose creators and personality were always integral to what it sold.

A-RT sold more than aluminum and wood.

It sold an aesthetic, a sense of humor, and an idea about what yo-yoing could be outside the polished world of contests and conventional marketing.

For many players, that was exactly what made A-RT special.

For others, it eventually made the products impossible to separate from the brand surrounding them.

Both are part of A-RT’s legacy, and both belong in the archive.

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Archival note: Some elements of the A-RT controversy survive primarily through community discussions, screenshots, and references to social-media posts that are no longer readily available. Where intent or attribution cannot be independently established, this article describes the claim as interpretation or community recollection rather than fact.