We’ve never been about trends.
From the start of our brand, we always had one focus in mind: Make the yoyo’s we enjoy throwing.
As a result, our yoyos often wouldn’t follow into the design styles and attributes that make current yoyo releases “current”, or if they did, it was more coincidental than copying the direction other yoyos were going.
That said, something interesting happened in 2024 that would change things a bit…
I’m sure if you’re at all a yoyo player in the community, then you’re probably familiar with trying yoyo’s at club meets. It gives you a chance to try a throw that you’re considering for yourself, or maybe try something that wasn’t on your radar at all just for the experience. This is something that I got to do with our good friend Kaylee (you may have heard of her š ).
Kay and I had started a fun activity where we would send yoyo’s from our collection to each other to try out. Both of our collections are quite different than each others so it really gave us a chance to try out throws that were way out of our norms. Kay got to try a lot of old school yoyos of the past, where I got to try a lot of new modern yoyo’s that just hadn’t interested me as much on paper. This is where some things shifted for me…
I never really bought into the whole “Super Wide Comp Yoyo” trend. I always favored undersized rounded shape yoyos to just chill with. Heck, my “signature” yoyo was the Shibari/S2 which was an undersized rounded rim yoyo. While some of our yoyos leaned toward a wider and bigger size like the PLUR, we mostly kept the specs pretty tame. But something happened when I got to try some of Kay’s wider yoyos for me. I noticed that there was a certain feel that many of these bigger yoyos had that made things easier to hit. I knew this was a common argument for the bigger yoyos but it was probably one of the first times I actually “FELT” this phenomenon. And in experiencing this in a bigger way than I had before, I thought to myself: “What if?”
I sat down with Mei and began the design process, taking some inspiration from yoyo’s I had tried, but doing some alterations to create a more comfortable feel in the hand. I also knew that while we wanted to go a bit bigger, we didn’t want to go ALL OUT into the trends, and instead opted for something that gives a taste of that direction, rather than pouring a whole jar of MSG onto your tongue. It felt like we were rebelling against our usual direction, but we were still rebelling against the trend in our own way as well. After some back and forth with shape adjustments, prototype G1 was born.
The shape was perfect. The feeling in the hand was exactly what we wanted, and the slightly wider size approaching 50mm was pushing us out of our comfort zone but in a good way. However, things weren’t there just yet.
Yoyo design is tricky and nuanced, and the “formula” for a well balanced and powerful yoyo of “big rim weight with less mid/center weight doesn’t always work out, and that was an issue we had with proto G1.
Our team noticed that while the shape and size was great, there seemed to be a lack of power coming from this design. But why would this be? We shifted tons of rim weight and minimized the center weight! That should result in something perfect! Right?!? As it turns out sometimes its more about how you balance out your cuts and weight areas than following what “should” work. In our case, this meant actually shifting some weight toward the mid areas and slightly bringing in the outer edge. This ended up being the ticket.
Prototype G2 was born, and with it came the new official name of our project: GLAZE.
The term Glaze came from 2 places. On one hand, it was a nod to the way people were “glazing” up yoyo’s that were getting wider and wider. And 2, it was an act of rebellion against a yoyo community chat server banning the word from use which just fit into the whole rebellion background of this yoyo itself.
Once the Glaze was ready for production, we opted for a blasted finish and two colorways. Light rose pink (To this day one of my all time favorite simple yoyo colors), and a special run of Kaylee’s signature colorway “STB” (So True Bestie!) as she had a big part in inspiring the yoyo to happen.
Nitty gritty specs and numbers:
- Weight: 66.5 Grams
- Diameter: 55.5 mm
- Width: 47.5 mm
- Blasted finish
- WIA Aluminum (Waifu Infused Aluminum, Forced to marinate in a room showing 720 hours of nonstop cultured anime to ensure full saturation into the finished product)
The Glaze plays precise and quick, with a solid feeling in the hand that is easy and comfortable to throw and catch. Perfect for players looking to develop their competition and horizontal play, the Glaze’s bigger shape and catch zone lends to easier landings and precision. The blasted finish combined with the smaller diameter inner catch zone makes long grind tricks and transfers happen with ease. The Glaze is the perfect yoyo to carry around for daily play or locked in practice sessions for sure.
We also decided to bring back our OC “Harumi” for this yoyo release, who we first featured on the Senpai! Packaging will feature her on the box.
Finally, we wanted to make sure that the Glaze could be very accessible to everyone’s budget, so we are happy to release this at a very affordable price of under 50$
From first conception in CAD form to the final finished product, it took 2 years to complete the Glaze. Definitely one of our longer projects but we feel the time was worth it. We hope you all enjoy the results!
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