“Introducing “The Talent” from Alchemik Yoyos. This exciting new drop is a 7068 AL interpretation of our flagship titanium model “The Tyrant”. Featuring the same design and dimensions as the Tyrant at 54mm D, 45mm W and weighing in at a nimble 63g all on my favorite – a D bearing. Great hand feel and play in a striking design featuring distinctive undercuts in the rim. Colorways pay homage to the Gnometrooper and the DedGnome as well as two signature Alchemik looks seen previously on The Roentgen (signature yoyo of teammate Tyler Jorgenson). Very limited supply available in clear for those purists.”
This is something we’ve been working on for months and months, and we’re excited to finally introduce the second project in our line-up. Here is the Pomelo.
SPECS
dia 65.3mm wid 54.96mm weight 61.3g material 7068 AL
I’ve always loved oversized throws. I got into yo-yoing in 2006, a time where Duncan’s Hardcore line was still very much the rage. The first bearing yoyo I ever got was the Duncan Throw Monkey, Duncan’s 5A-centric model, and I absolutely loved it. At 63mm in diameter and around 70g, it was quite a handful, but there was a charm to its physical largesse, both in roundness and bounciness of the shape and material. I remembered going through wads of friction stickers on the Throw Monkey, shredding it through the summer.
In time, I found a new favourite in the Freehand Zero — which was Duncan’s premium choice for “performance” plastics at the time; it excelled in ways the Throw Monkey did not, and its design allowed for nimbler and more precise play.
I never forgot, however, the comfort and satisfaction of the way a large, fat throw felt in the hand, or the fun of hitting tricks on a yoyo of such massive proportions. The tactile signature of these “biggies” were unique; sometimes it felt like you were playing 1A and 4A at once.
The Pomelo is a modern love letter to the oversized throws of bygone eras. It is not made for dense tech, or play that abides by the current meta; the Pomelo is made for risky bangers, creative movement tricks, and excels at regens, binds and whip-style tricks, and more artistic and expressive play. It has soul, and is just really, really fun to throw.
The Pomelo is named after one of the largest citrus fruits, and true to form, it is unapologetically large, sitting at 65.3mm in diameter and 55mm in width. (The word pomelo also feels like a portmanteau of pillow and marshmallow, “pi-mallow”, which represents all the characteristics of it being big, but airy and light… but that’s just us being silly.)
In the Pomelo, we adapted the step-and-schmoove response area from the Cloudberry, which allows it to glide smoothly on the string and to take serious layering without snagging. We also adapted our response gap to keep binds tight and predictable, and it shows; we put the Pomelo through a gauntlet of bind tests — low rpms, ghosts, whip-types — and it missed next to none of them. In other words, uncompromising and dependable in the right places, but forgiving where it needs to be.
The most exciting feature of the Pomelo to me, and what distinguishes it from its oversized counterparts, is its light weight. One downside of old-school oversized throws like the Throw Monkey or Flying Panda were that they were flat-out dense, given their rubber-rims and polycarbonate-shell hybrid construction. At only 61.3g, the Pomelo is incredibly featherweight, especially given its large profile, and is svelte on the string.
We maximised the characteristics of 7068 AL, keeping the walls as thin as the material would allow, and also kept rim weight to a minimum. We put a little raised doughnut around the “halo” on the cup to add just a bit of center weight.
The overall mass and how it is distributed gives it an insanely fun playfeel. It is ridiculously floaty and willowy, and its strange how something this large and fat could move so nimbly. It really does feel like a pillow on a string.
The heart of our project in the Cloudberry was in finding a sweet spot between fun and performance; the soul of the Pomelo is similar. While it aces modern tests of playability, it fundamentally pays homage to its old-school forebears — and joins a lineage that lives on in other throws like the 420, Burm, Overture, and Par Avion.
The Pomelo is a delight to me personally, as it takes its cue from the past, but has a seat at the table of modern throwing. We’re hoping it brings you as much joy as it does us.
Thank you for reading this long post, and for all your support so far. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or responses – I would really love to hear them.
When we were prototyping the Cloudberry a few months ago, we had to decide between two final versions — the lighter, which we eventually chose to bring into production, and a version that was less than a gram heavier and a smidge wider that we just couldn’t forget.
There was quite a bit of interest in these prototypes, but there were only a few to pass around at the time. Over the next few months we decided to do a small run of them with minor performance tweaks.
we’re excited to bring to you a variant of our beloved first model — the Thunderberry.
SPECS
dia 56.4 mm wid 48.7 mm weight 64.9 g material 7068 AL
At heart, it has the same soul as its twin. It just has a bit more edge, a bit more oomph, some more muscle. The Cloudberry sits between floaty comfort and fun, and performance; the Thunderberry occupies the same space, but takes one step towards the latter.
The Thunderberry plays power forward for the varsity team, does hardcore bouldering over the weekends, and owns its own startup; it also enjoys book readings in Renaissance literature, kicking back to Simon and Garfunkel to unwind, and is super nice to his cousins. He’s 6’6, 200 lbs, and Grandma loves having him around.
This whole project starts with a deep interest for how form influences playfeel. The throws that have always felt best to me were “fatty” organics. On a tactile level, they are full-sized, have incredibly comfortable curves, and feel great in the hand. In my opinion, it’s half the reason why people love organics in the first place. Playwise, they are zippy and full of floaty goodness. The Cloudberry is my attempt to do all that, but with enough oomph to get through any modern trickset – in other words, to make the most comfortable throw I can imagine.
Specs Diameter: 56.4 mm Width: 48.58 mm Weight 64.07 g Gap Width 4.4 mm Material: 7068 Aluminium
Working with 7068 AL was something exciting for me personally. The denser and stronger alloy allows me to keep the walls as thin as possible, which was necessary for two crucial things – firstly, to keep the overall weight down; and secondly, to be creative with apportioning rim weight where it needed it to be.
Something I really wanted to move away from was clunky or forceful weight distribution, which made other throws with otherwise really, really nice profiles feel heavy or unwieldy in play.
Keeping the cup open, simple, and with as much unbroken curvature as possible was important in my design process – very likely influenced by my experience in pottery. While most throws get power from thick and fat rims, I wanted to keep the rim lip as gradual and subtle as possible. Using 7068 gives me the freedom to add significant rim weight without having to disproportionately inflate the area.
Being full-sized, wide, and still only 64.07 g in weight, the Cloudberry has an MOI of 15,660. It might feel light and agile on the string, but it will have enough power to last through the longest of your combos.
Here’s one bonus detail I really enjoy – a steep, sloping response step leading to a schmoove ring. In addition to a width of 48.58mm, the Cloudberry’s going to be extremely forgiving in the departments of string friction and having a wide catchment area.
part ii — prototype and production release
The prototypes came yesterday and I’ve spent a full day just getting to know them. Here are some pictures of them in non-rendered, real-life goodness.
To be honest, it’s everything I dreamed it would be. As my first throw design project, I’m filled with real joy, but also huge relief – a feeling, I think, more experienced and seasoned people than myself might understand. Once the final file went out to the machinist, I spent many days second guessing it and wondering if I had missed something in its design. To finally have it in hand, and have it feel and play exactly like you imagined designing it is an amazing feeling.
At 56.4mm (dia) and 48.6mm (wid), it’s pretty full and wide – it fills your hand very fully and feels soft on the catch, but doesn’t feel excessively or unnecessarily sized. It just feels good in hand.
Playfeel wise, it is agile, floaty and very nimble, and also simultaneously powerful. It doesn’t feel like a competition bimetal, of course, but it has the “hollow body” feel I was hoping to capture – the kind of blend between lightness and punch that I feel in throws like the TiBowl and Akita.
The two prototype versions are actually different structurally, and so naturally play differently as well. The teal is slightly wider (by 0.07mm) and heavier (by 0.82g), and quite a bit more powerful, but still retains its essential “hollow body” playfeel — floaty and nimble, but with a double portion of oomph. The production version will run closer to the champagne (which the rest of this entry refers to), which is in essence everything we imagined the Cloudberry to play like from day one — but we have some exciting plans for the teal that we’ll talk more about in the future. For our first run, it’s important to us to bring to you the truest embodiment of the original idea, and this is it.
