Here’s a great clip video of the 2013 Bulgarian National YoYo Contest…a bunch of yoyo players hanging out, throwing tricks, and having a good time. There’s also some compelling head-cam footage of someone eating a sandwich.
Archives for September 9, 2013
Shutter Giveaway Winners!
We had hundreds of entries into our Shutter Giveaway Contest! It was hard, but we’ve finally selected our winners! If you’ve won, please email us with your physical mailing address so that we can ship your brand new YoYoFactory Shutter yoyos. Thanks so much to everyone who entered!
YoYoNews x YoYoFactory Shutter Giveaway Winners
Twitter Winner (Red/Black Shutter): @SQxBR
Oh why, #YoyoNews, Am I writing this haiku? Well I want it, so. #yoyofactory #shutter
— SquareXbear (@SQxBR) September 2, 2013
Instagram Winner (Blue Shutter): @TotalArtist
Facebook Winner (Violet/Blue Shutter): /YoYoLisaLe
TYYT / David Molnar – Gate To Triangle
C3YoYoDesign Hungarian team member David Molnar throws down “Gate to Triangle” for Terra YoYo Tutorials. Great work as always from David! Yoyo used is the Alpha Crash by C3YoYoDesign.
Topsy Krets ft. Joey Fleshman & Benji Sharib
New video from Joey Fleshman and Benji Sharib! Here’s what Benji has to say about it:
This is is probably one of the coolest videos that I have made to date. It isn’t often in the Navy that you find other people that are into yoyoing at all, so I was pretty astounded when I found out there was another person on my base that threw. It was complete happenstance that someone that knew Joey saw be playing with my Flow, and got me his number. Turned out that Joey was transferring in 3 days from when I contacted him so we got together and filmed for a day. Such an awesome opportunity!
You may happen to notice a logo in the top right ‘Neverbored’. Its a concept/idea ive been talking about for a while, and you’re probably going to start seeing that in all my videos. I really am Never bored, so it kind of fits. I guess this is the first installment in my Neverbored series, I don’t foresee it ever stopping, but whatever.
I would like to give a HUGE shoutout to SPYY, they disbanded but Joey threw almost exclusively SPYY yoyos in this video (with the exception of the plastic Severe).
Lastly, I’d like to thank my Sponsor for hooking me up with the Flow. SPIN DYNAMICS ROCKS. Really though, thanks Nick, you’re a good friend and you run an awesome team.
Music is Flight of the Featherless by Cloud Cult.
Shot with a standard kit lens on a Cannon Rebel T3i with a tripod that could use some WD 40.
Filmed and Edited by yours truly (with a little help from Joey).
Thanks for watching!
Innovation Movement x Nikita Apon
YoYoFactory Russia Jr. Team Member Nikita Apon throws down a second video for Innovation Movement, and it’s filled to the brim with goodness.
Vo-Mitation ft. Mihai Suster & Maciek Cwynar
Here’s a C3YoYoDesign-shaped bullet from Poland…a new video from Mihai Suster and Maciek Cwynar with plenty of solid 1A & 5A play. Not sure why they went with the “Vo-Mitation” play on the yoyo’s name, but I’m going to chalk it up to language barrier.
Ryan Gee – The Illest Supreme Diamond
Here’s a new bucket of “what the hell” from everyone’s third or fourth favorite weird-trick player, Ryan Gee!
Clint x Ibs
YoYoFactory players Clint Armstrong and Ibrahim Rahman are riding the front of a wave of new players that you should all be paying a lot of attention to. If you haven’t been paying attention to them, here’s your chance to get started.
Ashton Kutcher Knows Nothing About YoYos
Actor Ashton Kutcher recently appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live and told the mother of all stories about the invention of the yoyo. We’ve all heard the “oh, it was a weapon” myth repeated over and over, but this one is a brand new piece of mythology.
The hilarity starts in at 2:55, where Ashton discusses his childhood neighbor, a supposed toy inventor named Harry Billings. According to Harry, he is the inventor of the yoyo. Not “a” yoyo, but “the” yoyo. There’s some shenanigan about the Duncan Tinker Toy Company (which has never existed, ever) sending out Tinker Toy kits out to kids and asking them to invent a new toy. Harry claims he created the first yoyo, then apparently patented it himself (as a child?), and then sold the patent for $100. It’s a great story, told well. It’s also 100% false.
I know that no one tunes in to Jimmy Kimmel for accurate historical data, and I know that it’s pretty unreasonable to expect Ashton Kutcher to be an expert on toy history. But since he’s currently part of a venture capital firm that throws a fair bit of money around to tech startups, it would be cool if he knew what he was talking about before he spun fictional tales of inventor’s woes on national television.
So, since we’re kind of adamant about this stuff, here are a couple of actual facts about the origins of the yoyo:
1. The oldest recorded yoyo carbon dates back to 450 BC, in Greece. They were made from terracotta, and it’s original use was as a children’s toy. A yoyo from this time period is currently on display in the Smithsonian, and another in the National Museum of Athens in Greece. Here’s a picture of the one in Greece:
2. The yoyo traveled all over the world, but came to the United States in the 1920s via a Filipino immigrant named Pedro Flores. Flores started up the Flores YoYo Company in Santa Barbara, California, and that’s how entrepreneur (inventor of the parking meter and founder of Good Humor ice cream) Donald F. Duncan came to learn about the yoyo. Duncan purchased the Flores YoYo Company for an amount reputed to be close to $250,000. In modern dollars that’s over $4 million bucks.
In the event that you don’t trust us, you can find a full recounting of all of this here and here and here and here and here.
So while the idea of some little-known toy inventor accidentally giving away a fortune to some unscrupulous business man is romantic, and everyone loves a villain, there is absolutely nothing true about this story. The yoyo was invented a long, long time ago and everyone responsible for bringing it to the American public was paid quite handsomely.
Sorry, Ashton. You got punk’d.