YoYo Related News From Around The World
Holy crap, this is not a drill, we got a new Hank Freeman video!! The greatest man ever to escape Ohio brings us two minutes of fresh 3A tricks with the new bi-metal design from 44rpm, the company he started with Drew Tetz. No word on when it will be available, but I’ll keep pestering Drew and Hank for a sample so I can get pics and specs for you. In the meantime, let’s all watch Hank be amazing for two straight minutes and then watch it again.
Yoyo used is the 44rpm Oscillator.
Happy birthday to the always amazing Hank Freeman! And to celebrate we’ve got a brand new video from everyone’s favorite 3A player who isn’t Hajime. Hank is one of those rare talents who came up in the late-90s yoyo boom and then just…kept going. He started off as a strong 2A player, then moved into 3A and became a 3-time World YoYo Champion at an age when most players have long since stopped competing…and the last two years he’s still placed Top 3 in the 3A division. Hank Freeman is the player we should all aspire to be…talented, humble, funny, steady, and leaving Ohio to live in Prague just for the hell of it.
Happy birthday, brother. Thanks for all the years of amazing tricks!
Yoyo used is the 44RPM Rhythm.
The 44RPM Blues is the second aluminum release from 44RPM, the start-up company from Drew Tetz and 3x World & National YoYo Champion Hank Freeman. 44RPM launched with a load of “flatpack” toys…yoyos, kendamas, and spin tops that are laser cut from a single sheet of wood and then assembled by the player. The Blues is their signature edition yoyo for co-founder Drew Tetz.
The 44RPM Blues is a huge, ridiculous yoyo that is almost guaranteed to be the most fun and unique throw in your entire collection. The huge diameter juxtaposed with a totally reasonable weight means that without the wooden weight rings, the Blues is huge and floaty, and plays in a way that is best described as “round”. Add the included laser cut wooden rings and the Blues picks up a little extra spin time and the play goes from “round” to “fat”. Trust me…once you actually play with a Blues, this all makes perfect sense. Only a yoyo this strange and wonderful could be suitable as the signature model for 2014 Trick Innovator of the Year Drew Tetz.
Available in solid colors with art created by Rodrigo “Whip” Yokota, the Blues makes use of laser cut wooden rings to give it a truly unique look. The combination of a rich red anodizing with the burnt wood of the rings makes the Blues look classy and interesting…I can’t speak for how the other colors will look with rings, but I suspect they’ll be fantastic as well. The anodizing is solid, without flaws, and the art is bold and cleanly engraved.
The 44RPM Blues retails for $55, which is plenty reasonable for a great playing modern aluminum yoyo, and a total bargain for something that is truly unique in the market. There is no other yoyo available that looks or feels like the Blues, and it’s worth the $$ just to have one handy for the sake of variety.
The 44RPM Blues is available through YoYoExpert.com.
The Rhythm is the first aluminum release from 44RPM, the start-up company from Drew Tetz and 3x World & National YoYo Champion Hank Freeman. 44RPM launched with a load of “flatpack” toys…yoyos, kendamas, and spin tops that are laser cut from a single sheet of wood and then assembled by the player. The Rhythm is their first player-centric release, and was designed with help from World YoYo Champion Rafael Matsunaga.
The 44RPM Rhythm is fat, floaty, and fun! Designed to be equally great for competition and every day play, the Rhythm is a perfect first aluminum release for a company like 44RPM. It’s got the spin time and stability that you expect from modern aluminum yoyos, but it plays fast and light and feels extra comfortable in the hand. It’s hard to describe how this plays in relation to other yoyos…the best way to describe it would be to say that it plays like you’re sitting in a comfortable, overstuffed chair. It feels almost weightless on the string, has crisp and clean binds, and can handle everything from goofy picture tricks to top-level 1A/3A/5A play. The Rhythm is the perfect yoyo to remind you how much fun yoyoing can be.
Available in solid colors with art created by Rodrigo “Whip” Yokota, the Rhythm keeps it simple and fun. Never meant to be a “collectors item”, the Rhythm was designed to be a knock-around yoyo that gets used, so don’t expect much in the way of fancy anodizing and limited editions. The anodizing is solid, without flaws, and the art is bold and cleanly engraved.
The 44RPM Rhythm retails for $42.50, which is plenty reasonable for a great playing modern aluminum yoyo. Priced with 3A players in mind, the Rhythm is a great deal for 3A players looking for a new pair, or a casual player who just wants something new and fun.
The 44RPM Rhythm is available through YoYoExpert.com.
44RPM, the start-up toy company from Drew Tetz and Hank Freeman, just announced their first sponsored player: scene legend Takeshi Kamisato! With Takeshi’s history as a yoyo trick innovator and filmmaker, and his recent (and pretty awe-inspiring) jump into the world of absurdly hard kendama tricks, he’s a perfect fit for 44RPM.
In addition to their line of flatpack yoyos, kendamas, and spin top, 44RPM recently released a budget metal yoyo called the Rhythm, and have started showing photos of it’s companion yoyo, the Blues. The Rhythm, designed by National YoYo Master Rafael Matsunaga with art by Rodrigo Yokota is in stores now. There is no release date set for the Blues.
Congratulations, Takeshi and 44RPM!
It’s a rare treat when we get new tricks from Hank Freeman, but it looks like the release of his new yoyo from 44RPM, the Rhythm, is enough to get Hank in front of a camera!
The Rhythm is a new metal yoyo from 44RPM, the company started by Hank and Drew Tetz with all those amazing flatpack toys. We’ve got a sample on the way, and we’ll give you all the details when it arrives! In the meantime, enjoy some solid tricks from Hank Freeman and Czech favorite Matyas Racek. And check out Hank’s trick at 2:13….holy crap, right?
Duncan Toys is hosting their second International YoYo Championship on Saturday, August 8th at Downtown Disney in Anaheim, California!
RSVP for the event on Facebook, and join the Duncan Crew and other fantastic yoyo players as they compete for thousands of dollars in cash and prizes! There will also be special appearances by LA Lakers basketball player Jordan Clarkson, and the Laker Girls!
ESPN and Duncan Toys have co-produced a series of player profile videos of the Duncan Crew to promote the event; check out this profile of 3x World and National YoYo Champion and Duncan Crew member Hank Freeman.
44RPM has come out of the gate as easily one of the strangest and most creative new companies in the yoyo/skill toy market. The brainchild of Drew Tetz and Hank Freeman, all of their products are laser cut from a single flat piece of wood and you assemble them yourself. And they really work. It’s kinda nuts, really.
Their latest kendama release, the Penny, is a flatpack kendama that uses pennies to add extra weight, and the difference in play from their standard model kendama as the result of adding 7¢ is crazy!
Check out this video from Takeshi Kamisato, showing off what the 44RPM Penny can do in the hands of a bunch of kendama players.
Fist Salud knows what the deal is! This new trick compilation video features new work from John Ando, Yuuki Spencer, Shu Takada, Drew Tetz, Ayumu Harada, Dee, Igor Galiev, Koichiro Ueta, Hibari, Yoshinori Kawamura, Hajime Miura, Atsushi Yamada, Hank Freeman, Eiji Okuyama, Alex Garcia, Daiki Tanaka, and Petr Kavka. A truly all-star lineup!
Music is NSFW.
We’ve got official video of the winners from the 2014 Las Vegas Open YoYo Championship! Subscribe to our YouTube channel for the rest of the freestyles as they’re uploaded.
Czech players Jan Paprstein & Adam Hribal show some love for the new Duncan Triumph, the new signature yoyo for 3x World and National Champion Hank Freeman.
The Duncan Triumph is the new signature model of 3x World YoYo Champion, Hank Freeman…so if you’re gonna make a promotional video that doesn’t have him in it, you better find some damn good players.
As luck would have it, Isaac Sams and Sebastian Brock are damn good players. Enjoy!
Yoyo used is Triumph by Duncan Toys. Releases worldwide on October 21st, 2014.
In 2010, I had the idea that I wanted to push myself to be a more active yoyo player. Back when I first started playing, and all through my days working for Duncan Toys and then briefly as a tour demonstrator for YoYoFactory, I threw constantly. It was not at all uncommon for me to put in at least 5 – 6 hours a day, and if I was on tour or handling a trade show then it easily became 8 – 10 hours a day. But having kids and starting a business take a lot out of you, and in 2010 I was coming off several years of barely touching a yoyo at all. I needed something to kickstart my creativity, and nothing does that like a public declaration so I announced that I was going to start 365yoyotricks.com, a website where I created, filmed, and uploaded one yoyo trick every single day for a year.
It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought, but in 2011 I did it. One original trick, every day. I dipped into a well of older tricks for days when whatever I was working on wasn’t ready yet, but I published video of 364 original yoyo tricks in 2011. (Halloween was a treat instead of a trick, with a coupon code for YoYoExpert.) In 2012 I decided to bring in some people who I personally wanted to see more play from, and put together a roster of players that are some of my personal favorites: David Ung, Nate Sutter, Ed Haponik, Drew Tetz, and Guy Wright. They contributed about a trick a week each, and I filled in the gaps. For 2013 I did the same thing with a new roster of players: Jacob Jensen, Spencer Berry, Darnell Hairston, Jake Bullock, and Rafael Matsunaga. As always, there were plenty of guest spots, but the formula remained; one new, original yoyo trick every day.
I even started a spin-off site, 365cooltricks.com, that is run by my friend Mark Hayward, featuring all kinds of tricks…juggling, kendama, magic, sleight of hand, bar tricks, and other object manipulation. It’s awesome, by the way, and Mark Hayward now has a much stronger understand of what I’ve done for the past 3 years in keeping 365yoyotricks.com going. Ha. Hi, Mark!
Today is the last trick of 365yoyotricks.com, “Denouement” by Hank Freeman.
My time is filled with fatherhood and husbandhood and running this site and organizing contests and generally doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to better the yoyo industry and community. So in the interest of making sure that I put all my energy in the best places possible, I’m closing the doors on 365yoyotricks.com. The site will remain up indefinitely, and thanks to the tireless work of Greg Pettit it’s a LOT more searchable than it was before so it’s now a much more functional archive of amazing tricks from a lot of fantastic yoyo players. (And me. Ha.)
A huge thanks to André Boulay and YoYoExpert.com for his help in keeping 365 going, helping me move the site from Tumblr to WordPress, and sponsoring the project with kickbacks for the players. Much love to everyone who ever contributed a trick, to everyone who ever watched a trick, and to everyone who slapped one of our stickers somewhere inappropriate. A huge thank you to Tressley Cahill for designing the logos for both 365yoyotricks.com and 365cooltricks.com.
It’s been a great three year run! The theoretical successor to 365 is the #trickcircle series that Drew Tetz has been curating from Instagram clips…so follow that hashtag on Instagram, and keep an eye on YoYoNews.com for weekly roundups and discussion.
Happy New Year, and thanks so much for supporting this project! It really did wonders for me as a player, and I hope you got as much inspiration from it as I did.
The division of 3A was previously nicknamed, “The Parking Lot Division” after Jon Gates jokingly named it its current name of 3A; it was nicknamed this because of the Triple A Throwdown which took place in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, the official hotel of the US National Yo-Yo Contest. The Triple A Throwdown was the marquee event for two long spinning yo-yos when official contests only had dedicated divisions for 1A and 2A and thus served as the precursor to 3A ascending to a division of its own. The Throwdown showcased all of the best players doing their best trick judged by the audience themselves–winner would receive the famed Triple A Duck of Power. Tommy Gunn, who made countless tutorial videos (I specifically remember learning seasick), just uploaded this great piece of yo-yo history to youtube and it is well worth the watch. The video features the Father of Triple A, Mark McBride, another founding father, Steve Brown, a huge innovator, Spencer Berry, and the winner of the 2001 Triple A throwdown, none other than Hank Freeman, who, in my opinion, last month proved he is the greatest to ever throw 3A. All of these legends, along with the several other legends in this video, make it one of the best historical videos I have ever seen of the yo-yo community, but perhaps I am biased!
If you don’t mind be getting a little personal here, the Triple A Throwdown played a huge role in my development in 3A. I qualified to the finals for the first time at Nationals in 2006 but mostly tanked on stage but that night I had the opportunity to compete in the Triple A Throwdown; the challenge, which was introduced after 3A became an established division and unresponsive yo-yos tripled (pun) the possibilities, was to spin around for 10 seconds and then try and do your best trick. I remember spinning and spinning and as I was falling over I hit assisted Brent Stole. I vividly remember everyone cheering and rooting on the 12 year old me. I was definitely hooked on the style and never put it down. My passion for this small division shaped much of my appreciation and love for creativity, for pushing the boundaries–much like the people in this video did. I never did get to take the duck home but my name is written on that legendary artifact of yo-yo history and I am honored to be part of it. Thank you for reading if you did!
Now, what are you waiting for? Check out this piece of history!