BANDAI - SUPERYO-YOS

The company I work for is responsible for bringing the anime (japanese cartoon) Super Yo-yo to the Philippines. Sometime in 2003, during our annual event called Anime Quest, the company Smarty Toys released the Bandai-Super Yo-yo line of yoyos . Yoyomaster Glenn was there to help promote the line. Jeez, what a performance! I wish I could do stuff like that. I immediately bought a blue Super Yo-yo. It was one of those take-apart ones which came with a ball-bearing axle for string tricks plus an additional wooden axle for looping. It also came with two sets of metal rings to add to the rim weight for faster spins. It had a nice feel to it, didn't like the metal rings, though. A wrong placement and they made the yoyo wobble. Adding all the rings made it too heavy and seemed to make my string lose whatever springiness it had left. Only tried the wood axle once and didn't like the feel.

For christmas that same year, our boss handed out red Super Yo-yos to all of us. They were similar to the one I bought minus the wooden axle and weight rings. The yoyos looked like older stock than those released by Smarty but I actually found the red yoyo I got better in terms of response. And oh, yeah, both yoyos had that character Seito Hojoin on them.

Sometime after christmas I indulged and bought a Maximum Spin Super Yo-yo with stickers of the main character Shunichi Domoto on the sidecaps. It can't be taken apart but the gap can be adjusted to the yo-er's liking with a simple twist. Twisted to make the gap smaller, I could do loops. Twisted for a wider gap, some string tricks. Was hard to land some tricks since the yoyo didn't carry a butterfly shape.

This 2004, I was finally able to read a translated manga (japanese comics) which preceeded the anime series. I was actually surprised since the yoyos which the characters used (and some of the characters themselves) bore not only the Bandai name but also the names of other well-known yoyo companies such as Russell, Duncan and Yomega. This got me thinking... No wonder some of them looked like my old Yomegas. I'm not privy to the details but it seems Bandai made a lot of tie-ups to release this anime / manga in Japan. Looks like it worked... I still want to buy some Russells from this line...

Oh yeah... There were yoyo contests too! I think Joseph won that one...

Super Yo-yo
Shape: Butterfly
Axle: Ball Bearing

Super Yo-yo
Shape: Butterfly
Axle: Ball Bearing and Wood
(With extra metal rings for added rim weighting)

Maximum Spin
Shape: Modified
Axle: Ball Bearing
(Adjustable gap)