Most Innovative Yo-Yos

I thought this yo-yo was cool because the user can take it apart and customize it to their own preferred playing style. Customize it for long sleepers, string tricks, looping, or even off-string play! It even offers a Heavy Metal Body for the Hyper Dragon yo-yo. Additionally, it appeared in the anime series Super Yo-Yo (or Supersonic Spinners in Japan).

The Hyper Dragon might well have laid the groundwork for new generations of customizable yo-yos, such as the HyperCluster series (also made by Bandai), the Yo-Mods line by Yomega, and the EX-SYSTEM by YoYoJoker.

First produced in 1984, the Silver Bullet was the very first yo-yo to be made of aluminum, which allowed it to sleep longer than anything else available at the time. It features a wooden axle sleeve, similar to the No Jive 3-in-1, which first came out in 1978. Tom Kuhn, who is also a dentist, obviously created something special when he began producing the Silver Bullet in his workshop.

I have many Tom Kuhn yo-yos, including an original Silver Bullet and the Boxed Heirloom set of 12 laser-carved yo-yos.

I have this yo-yo and I like it. It's fun to play with, and I can perform a sweet Creeper trick with it as well. Although it doesn't spin as long as a ball-bearing yo-yo, it set the stage for such designs. The Fireball was first released in 1989, five years after the Brain. For those who may not know, Yomega has been around since the 1980s. The Fireball's Teflon transaxle sleeve allows it to spin three times longer than anything with a fixed axle, like the Duncan Imperial.

The original composite material yo-yo was released in 2000 by YoYoJam. With its plastic body and aluminum weight rings on the rims, this brought YoYoJam onto the map in the yo-yo industry.

This plastic/metal body composition has been consistently used since, especially in the Dark Magic II (#1 choice on YoYoExpert.com), the Rextreme, and the Mega SpinFaktor, which was used by Rick Wyatt to set an old long sleeper record at Worlds. Of course, other companies like Buzz-On have also made yo-yos that are partly plastic and partly metal.

The Viper was Henrys' very first yo-yo product, released in 1998. It consisted of an aluminum hub with large rubber shells that form a Butterfly shape. While it has an adjustable string gap and a ball-bearing axle, its defining gimmick is that it could be used in the then-new offstring playing style.

This is the second Tom Kuhn yo-yo on the listing, and for good reason: it is the first modern ball-bearing yo-yo. It also features an adjustable string gap, along with that same aluminum body as the original Silver Bullet. Combine a ball-bearing axle with a full-metal body and what do you get? A yo-yo that sleeps much longer than anything else at the time - it came out in 1990.

I have one of the 39 prototypes of this yo-yo, the Thom Kuhn Turbo-yo, along with several of the SB-2s. When they first came out, they truly changed yo-yoing forever.

The original Yomega yo-yo started it all. It was a yo-yo with a Brain, featuring a centrifugal clutch system. This allows the yo-yo to automatically return to the user's hand when it begins to lose spin. First released in 1984, it has been a staple ever since.

This is the best yo-yo I've ever had the pleasure of using. It's unfortunate that HSpin no longer exists. They abandoned this sort of design years before closing down, so I suppose the writing was on the wall.

The yo-yo was nicely sized, slightly smaller than most others, and had excellent sleep performance, akin to Rip Van Winkle. It was also responsive enough for looping. The design was brilliant - portable, good-looking, and it felt great to use.

It's a shame they don't make anything like this anymore.

Released in 1998, the HandQuake 1.4 series was the first to feature a bi-metallic composition body. The 1.4, of which only 50 were made, had an aluminum body with embedded steel weight rings. The 1.4b, with a production run of 500, featured bronze weight rings, making it heavier than the original. Both the 1.4 and 1.4b also had a shim-adjustable string gap.

Its name stands for Raider Performance Measurement, and this yo-yo measures the user's performance in long sleepers and looping. It also detects errors and keeps a record of them.

The yo-yo features an LCD monitor for visual output and has three buttons for viewing high scores, changing gameplay modes, and viewing results. Additionally, it includes a roller bearing and starburst response, just like the standard Raider. Tiger Electronics also produced a similar yo-yo called the E-Yo.