Ever try to spin a 256 pound yoyo! The world's largest Yo-yo can be seen at Chico's National Yo-Yo Museum. This Guinness Book of World Records beauty, a Big-Yo that actually works, was designed by Tom Kuhn. It is a No Jive 3 in 1, Smooth - San Francisco Custom Yo-Yo.
One of the many rare finds at the National YoYo Museum in Chico, be sure to make this a stop on your road trip. Vintage Terminators, Silver Bullets, SuperYO, and Samurais are on display at a place that is considered the epi-center of yoyo-ing.
Yoyos weren't invented in San Francisco, but they left their heart there around 1928 when the Duncan yo-yo version was invited in San Francisco by a guy named Donald F. Duncan Sr.
Like other inventions such as A&W Root Beer made famous in Lodi but created by a pharmacist in Arizona, the popular Duncan yo-yo was based on a Filipino wood-carved toy importer Pedro Flores drew audiences and applause with.
Duncan purchased both the yo-yo concept and the Flores company to begin manufacturing a crazy, entertaining toy that created a craze during the 1930's. Nearly every boy wanted and purchased a yoyo to learn and show off new yoyo tricks.
Walking the Dog is still a favorite today. As an intro level exercise in controlling your yoyo, the trick actually looks like a dog on a leash, if you can use your imagination. There is a battery of yoyo tricks you better have mastered before entering a yoyo competition.
Yoyo tricks have their descriptive names, and so do the yoyo styles-- Yomega XBrain and the swift Yomega PowerBrain Wing with its piston-like 4-way synchronized clutch system that engages simultaneously make yoyo collecting and performing lots of fun.
Fluorescent
colors and visible internal gears in
see-through resin, these babies look
somewhat like today's skate wheels.
Prices are still affordable with a
decent model to be had for around $10
and even the next step up costing on
$15. If you purchase a full collection
of yoyos you should plan to spend a
couple hundred bucks. Here are few
tricks:
Around the Corner : Cradles the string
around your shoulder, then spins and
returns back again.
Around The World: Throw the yoyo out
from your body at an angle, then spin it
on its string in a 360 degree circle,
then return it back to your hand.
Nation's Biggest YoYo Weighs 256 Pounds!
National Yo-yo Championships Spinning & Rolling Into Chico, California
Additional yoyo tricks include: Atomic
Bomb, Barrel Rolls, Baseball, Brain
Twister, Break Away, Buddha's Revenge,
Creeper, Dizzy Baby, Dog Bite, Double
Gerbil, Double or Nothing, Drop in the
Bucket, Eiffel Tower, Elevator, Flag,
Forward Pass, Gravity Pull, Hop the
Fence, Lariat, Loop the Loop, Mach 5,
Motorcycle, Over the Shoulder, Rattle
Snake, Rewind, Ripcord, Rock the Baby,
Roller Coaster, Runaway Dog, Run the
Dog, Shoot the Moon, Two Handed Loops,
Sleeper, Spaghetti, Split the Atom, 3
Leaf Clover, Through the Tunnel, Tidal
Wave, Trapeze, UFO, Walk the Dog, Warp
Drive
World Tour, Worm Hole and Zipper. To see
videos of these tricks, check out
yomega.com. Learn more about the yo-yo
at the National Yo-Yo Museum, 320
Broadway, Chico, California.
nationalyoyo.org