Duncan Butterfly/Imperial - Damaging to the hobby?

a year ago i came back to the hobby after 40 years. i didn’t know what happened to the yoyo. i baught a G2 Marvel. after a month of watching vids, i could not bind my yoyo. not even once. i modded it to be responsive and threw it around for a while. boring, ( not that fixed axle is boring i love that, but this was not that ) that’s not what the yoyo was designed for. nine months later i decided to try again and after a weekend i could do brain twister and atomic bomb and a basic bind. it was the brain twister and atomic bomb vids that put the bind into perstpective for me. thats how i learned. not everyone that picks up a yoyo will get it, be it the first time or the last. but some will, even if not at first. we as baby boomers seem to always be trying to find easier ways for our children to accomplish things that were much harder for us to learn. i learned all about cars, chassis and suspension set ups, engines and drivetrains by building and racing rc cars all my life. IMO

Thats me. Thats what I do. Only difference is mine was airbound, and not surface. And RTR has changed the landscape quite a bit.

Yea! something about the didge stirs something deeper, more primal than most anything. People either love it or hate it.
Heres a short clip of me and my friend playing open mic one night on a steamy night on GA’s coastal islands. Totally improv :smiley: This was before I started teaching. Ever want any tips, hit me up. :slight_smile:

Ive been able to get people binding at my store in just a matter of minutes before they hit their first solid hand slapping bind. It took me about an hour to figure it out after watching  a video that did a bad job explaining it. haha. All i did for the next few days was bind over and over again. it just felt so good!!

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I ended up getting into yoyoing because I picked up a crappy imperial-style yoyo with some software company’s logo on it at a booth at a trade show. I was working at the show too for my company and was bored out of my mind for several days…what saved me was that crappy yoyo that I couldn’t do anything with, except forward pass and some bad loops, but it was fun trying. That crappy yoyo inspired me to head to Toys R Us to see if I could find a Duncan Butterfly, since I’d seen those when I was a kid. Of course they had Butterflys in stock, and they had some Metal Drifters right next to them. I was feeling spendy, so I got both, at the time chastising myself for being stupid enough to spend 25 bucks on yoyos…I mean who in their right mind would spend that kind of money on yoyos?? I tried the Butterfly first, and compared to the crappy tradeshow yoyo, it was pure luxury. Then I tried the Drifter with the responsive set up, which is how it came stock, and my smile got even bigger. A few days later, I changed the Drifter to unresponsive, learned how to bind, found the tutorials on YYE and another site, and the rest is ongoing history.

Point is that a yoyo that’s even crappier than the Butterfly inspired me to take up the hobby. It’s the name recognition of Duncan and Butterfly that drew me in further, and once I tried the Butterfly I thought it was a wondrous thing compared to any other yoyo I’d ever tried. Maybe my story is unique, but in my opinion, in no way is Butterfly is damaging to the hobby. In my case, it added to the hobby.

I think it all boils down to how people are wired. Some people can sense that a pursuit or a hobby is something they will enjoy if they put in the time, practice, and patience. Some people are the instant gratification type…they just move on until they find something they’re instantly good at, or know they will be quickly. I’m not criticizing either type, but the latter type is never going to get good at yoyoing no matter what equipment they start with.

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^^ good stuff man. Thanks for sharing

so well put sir.

I’m about to be 37, play a number of instruments already. At this point I’m just fine tuning my instruments, and enjoying what others play or jamming with others when I get the time :slight_smile: But thanks for the offer!

Have you heard of the band “Brother”, met and saw them a couple times, got me wanting to play the didgeridoo.

Well said. A few years ago, my son wanted a 2wd Traxxas Slash for Christmas. Ready to Run. In the next 30 days, it felt like HE replaced everything imaginable aside from actual chassis. I had severe concerns that he would grow tired of running and breaking his truck, but, he has become a pretty decent driver, and last Christmas lobbied my wife hard so that I would have a Slash under the tree (he felt bad that when I would take him to RC that I was standing around yoyoing or kendama-ing, or asking if I could take a quick turn ;D )

As someone else said, I think it is a lot about personality and if you are interested in working to learn or if you want it handed to you. We have tried to impress on our kids that you need to enjoy the process, not just the result if you want to enjoy something. I’m guessing Mickey, Gentry, Zach, Shu and most of the people on this forum enjoy the process of playing/learning yoyo, at least I hope so.

very nice

In terms of looking at low end yoyos damaging the hobby or giving kids such a horrible experience that they are turned off to throwing, it seems to me that the first person you experience (either by viewing on tv or YouTube, or in person) has a lot more to do with it than the first Yoyo you experience. Very few kids would get interested in throwing if you just handed them any yoyo and walked away.
All of the past huge booms in yoyo sales happened with yoyos that would be looked at as junky throws by folks these days.

I don’t think it’s really the yoyo that turns someone off to yoyoing. Like some other people were saying, most kids these days want to do all the tricks from the start, and get frustrated when they can’t. The yoyo I learned on was a Yomega Raider, and I was able to learn a trapeze and bind on that yoyo before getting anything butterfly shaped (I personally think people should start with “modified” shaped yoyos, so that they have better technique later on). That was 5 years ago. I think the people who aren’t easily frustrated and dedicated to learning something new will stick with it while the people who pick up the toy on a whim will let it go and find something else to do. I think the butterfly’s a pretty fun yoyo, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

I love Duncan Butterfly yoyos.

Every time I scope in a New tactical weapon; I always bring a whole box of Butterfly’s with me.

The moment they ‘vaporize’ on impact is a moment that never gets old.

I almost feel like I am making the World a better place by cutting down the number of horrible yoyos in existence.

Unfortunately; buying boxes of yoyo just inspires the Company to make ‘more’ yoyos…

So although I have a great time smokin plastic; in reality I am doing nothing to save anybody from anything.

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Please tell me you have actually done this!

I thought I could compel Invaderdust to invite me to the store on inventory reduction day…:scream_cat:

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I started out on a cheap plastic giveaway yoyo, a basic imperial shape that is very similar to your standard Duncan. Then I upgraded to a speed Beatle, not exactly your standard trick slaying machine…

My point is, if someone is interested in yoyoing, they just need motivation, training, and some kind of encouragement, which typically comes from family or friends, to persevere.

Neverless, the cheapness and availability of these yoyos makes it far too easy for people to pick one up, become frustrated, and quit, possibly without ever making it return to their hand.

It’s a disservice.

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You say this, yet it is how you started. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Now that you say that…
I am somewhat contradicting myself, my point is that I had a lot of encouragement from family and friends, but depending on the person, they might end up thinking they just aren’t good at yoyoing, not that the yoyo is at fault. I also moved very quickly to a decent yoyo, which more ignorant people may not think of doing.

What is more fun to watch? A kid throwing a Butterfly or Imperial for the first time and having it return? Or a kid throwing a bearing axle for the first time and watching it just spin?

I wouldn’t say the Butterfly is a damage to the hobby, it’s because of the Butterfly I’m into Yoyos now. I haven’t touched a yoyo since I was a kid (and was never good at it) During the holiday season at Target last year, I saw a pile of Duncan Imperials and Butterflies in a bin they had set up in the back of aisle. I picked one up

My frustrations with both my lack of skill, and limitations/quality of the Butterfly I decided to hit google and was I ever shocked when I saw what kind of Yoyo’s where out there and the tricks and tutorials people where doing. That made me want to learn more and get a better throw.

You raise some good points to talk about, InvaderDust.

First I want to say that you were welcome on the ‘Why fixed axle’ thread and I understand why my response to your post made you feel unwelcome, I worded it very poorly.

All I was trying to say is that from your post, it looked as though you enjoy basically nothing about fixed axle yoyoing, therefore a thread encouraging people to throw fixed axles wasn’t really for you.

I think people here have already stated correctly that it really isn’t the equipment that puts people off yoyo, its the difficulty and persistance required to become proficient at it - even if people do blame the equipment for destroying their enthusiasm.

You are totally correct about the poor quality control of butterflies and Duncan really need to address this problem. Any other company would consider yoyos they made with misaligned halves as skip fodder.

Like others here, I began yoyoing on a yoyo that was not as good as a Butterfly. I had an old Russell Coke yoyo that made string catches very difficult with an axle that cut strings in under 10 minutes of play. I LOVED that yoyo. My dad showed me how to do walk the dog, rock the cradle, elevator and Eiffel tower. A Duncan Butterfly is a serious upgrade from what I began with.

I teach kids to yoyo on responsive Yoyofficer Xpoints. While it is a good beginner option because it is easily upgraded to unresponsive after mastering some basic string tricks, let me tell you, the modern design of those yoyos can make it harder to learn tricks!

Throwing a straight sleeper on a wide V shaped yoyos is much more difficult; the low walls on the yoyo make tricks like stop ‘n’ go difficult and looping is very awkward.

These are very basic tricks all performed much more easily with highet walled yoyos such as the Duncan Butterfly or Imperial or any other fixed axle yoyo.

About the only thing we can bash Duncan for is sending production overseas. That being said, I just picked up two Duncan butterflies at fry’s grocery store on sale $2.09 ea. The only thing I don’t like about them is the fact that there made in China. Corporate America wins again. Thank you share holders. What ever. They are both excellent at what they were designed for though.