side affects

There is yet another yoyo design that I would consider to the most popular one out of the many of iterations that has been incorporated into the yoyo over the years, and this design is called side effects. Side effects make very little change in the yoyo beside changing the weight of it slightly, but the part that people really like about it is that it’s highly customizable. Side effects are little screw in center pieces that u can place inside some yo yos, the come in different weights and shapes and has tons of options that people can choose from. Each yo yo that supports the side effects can have up to two and you can mix and match them to make your yoyo completely unique and somewhat special. The different designs include spikes and light bulb looking things along with something that looks alot like a hubstack but doesn’t have the function of one. They are very easy to put in too, u kinds just screw it into the middle when u want it in, then unscrew it when you want to take it out.

Hubstack yo-yos

     In my last post I talked about the yoyo design that makes preforming a finger spin that much easier. In this post I am going to talk about a design that introduces a whole new set of tricks that with out it, those tricks wouldn't be do-able. The finger spin could be done with most yoyos but it is just easier with the little reverse nipple design but all of the hubstack tricks can only be done on hubstack yoyos. A hubstack yoyo includes a little pole in the middle at the yoyo that spins independently from the rest of the parts. If you grab this little pole type thing and pull the string out then the yoyo will spin while still on your finger (technically doing a finger spin but this looks a little bit different when you first start the trick). This designed makes the yoyo closer to a fidget spinner in the sense that you could hold it in your hands while its spinning. 

finger spin

     Over the years the look of yoyos had evolved alot, almost constantly changing and changing pushing the bounders further and further. The ball bearing didn´t really come inside yoyos until the 1970-ish and now 90% of yoyos made today will no doubt include the ball bearing. Since then they keeped on iterating and making the yoyo's with special tricks in mind. One of those tricks that got a special yoyo design was the finger spin. A finger spin is when you throw the yoyo kinda horizontal and then you pop it up to land on your finger.

As u can imagine doing a finger grind could be very hard to do with a yoyo with flat walls because it will just slip off you finger every time you attempted to do it. In order to help people do this one trick they made the walls of the yoyo concave so your finger just slides into the middle.
The design that i think is the best for finger grinds is the reverse nipple, its like a little concave finger shaped hole in the middle of the yoyo that makes doing the finger spin that much easier.

The different style of play.

There is about 5 styles of play that one can do with a yo-yo. my favorite style has to be 1A because its the style that i know how to do the best. 1A style is just the plain style that requires the unresponsive/responsive yoyo to be around one hand and is great at preforming good looking string tricks. I find this style to be the easiest, plus its the only style that i really know.

2A is a style where you have 1 responsive yoyo in both hands making for some really cool looping tricks, but i haven´t really tried this style for the simple fact that there is no way of starting out without hitting yourself in the face.

3A is another style that uses two hands but this time its one unresponsive yoyo in both hands. this style looks the most memorizing, but i haven´t tried this on either basically for the same reason i don´t do 2A.

4A is a wired style that is when the yoyo is not connected to the string and is just flung through the air. This style looks the most difficult to do and is most likely going to be the last on i try to learn.

5A is the last style of play and in my personal opinion this style is the most fun to preform. Its when the string isn´t connected to your hand but to a counter weight (often in the form of dices ). I have been spending alot of time recently and i think i got alittle bit better. This style also looks memorizing.


If any of these styles interest you then i suggest that you just go look up a youtube video about it to see what it looks like in motion, Most of them look really cool and memorizing.

How i started

    Some of you are most likely wondering at this point how I found myself in this weird hobby of mine. It's kind of a stupid story that is kinda short but I'm going to tell it anyways. I have about four siblings, and when I was younger me and my little brother used to get into a ton of fist fights for almost no reason. He wanted to sleep in the top bunk, throw em hands. He wanted the window seat, throw em hands. He wanted the last pizza slice, throw em hands. He wanted to, well you guys get the point, we fought a lot. One day we accidentally made a little hole in the wall and our mother got pissed. After doing some unspeakable acts, our mother decided that we needed something to do with our hands, so she gave us both yo-yos and told us whoever learns the most tricks would get 20 dollars. I swear I've never put more time into anything in my life in order to get 20 dollars. I mean to me 20 dollars could have got me like 5 jars of applesauce, I was motivated. I spent weeks until my brother gave up and I was declared the winner by default. During my time doing this I manage to gain a liking for yo-yos and decided to keep playing. And thus is the story of how my mother owes me 20 dollars.

Metal Vs Plastic

I think most yoyos made today are made from metal just because people think that because they are a little more expensive that they are inherently better then plastic yoyos, although i think it is a little bit more complicated then that. The material of the yoyo doesn't necessarily make you good or bad at performing tricks , just in the same sense that if i write with a dollar pen and then write something with a $100 dollar metal pen my handwriting will still be shat. The metal pen for that price may make my handwriting looks a little less like shat, by adding glitter or something, but in the end with both material my handwriting will still be shat. While a pen and a yoyo are two different things, i think the same idea applies to this as well. If you are bad with a plastic yoyo you are most likely bad with a metal yoyo, and if you are good with a metal one you are most likely good with a plastic one.

Although if your just starting off i would recommend that you get a plastic one because hitting yourself in the head with a big fast moving clunk off metal is not something you would want to do. Unless u want to look like this kid.

What types of yo-yos are there

So there are two main types of yoyos, responsive and un-responsive play
Most people are familiar with the responsive yoyos that just come back to your hand, but the majority of people that are more in to yo-yos and where most of the tricks can be done is through un-responsive play. The difference is that an unresponsive yo-yo is able to sleep longer and it doesn't come back to your hand as easy as a responsive yo-yo would. In order to get an un-responsive yoyo to come back to your hand you would need to learn a special trick called a bind that will force the yoyo to come back up. The way the bind works is kinda weird to get your head around at first but i think most people will come to under-stand due time. A bind can be preformed in  many different ways an the only real requirement to call your trick a bind is to get the little bearing in the middle to spin the opposite direction then the yoyo itself thus getting it to come back up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogLZveJmKyw

here is a link to some corny video of a guy explaining it a lot better then I can.