CompanyYo-yo BrandEst. 1976
Tom Kuhn
Tom Kuhn Custom Yo-Yos is a San Francisco-based artisan yo-yo company founded in 1976 by Dr. Thomas Kuhn, a dentist known as “Dr. Yo.” A neighborhood Duncan yo-yo champion in 1955, Dr. Kuhn rediscovered yoyoing in the 1970s when a broken gift wooden yo-yo inspired him to design a better one. He applied aerospace-grade materials and machining precision to create yo-yos that were, by every measure, unlike anything before them.
Over five decades the company has produced some of the most historically significant yo-yos ever made: the No Jive 3-in-1 (1978), the first take-apart modular wooden yo-yo; the Silver Bullet (1984), the first full-aluminum yo-yo; and the Silver Bullet 2 (1990), the first commercially produced ball-bearing metal yo-yo. Dr. Kuhn also set a 1979 Guinness World Record for the largest yo-yo (256 lbs). Sports Illustrated profiled him in 1990 as “Man With the World on a String.”
Production is handled by BC YoYo (Brad Countryman / What’s Next Mfg.) from 1995 onward. Tom Kuhn retains brand ownership and design direction. The company remains active in 2026, with a 50th Anniversary edition of the No Jive in production.
