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I was one of those kids that had a new hobby every couple of months. Somewhere around 12-14 I was way into yo-yos. I bought most of the ones I could find locally, which was basically just the Yomega Fireball and others like it.

In fact I remember it was a huge deal with the local hobby shop got the VIPER, which cost an absurd $45. I just had to have one and – as expected – it ruled.

I remember learning yo-yo tricks was pretty difficult back then. You had the little paper printouts that came with yo-yos, or maybe a book, but that was pretty much it. Eventually I ran out of stuff to try to learn, and completely forgot about them. Kind of wish I still had that Viper though ?

All it took was one podcast episode

There was an episode of Matt Haughey’s great podcast Hobby Horse with Jeff Atwood, talking about Jeff’s obsession with yo-yos. He talked about how yo-yos are now cheap, abundant, and largely very good. The thing that got me interested again was the discussion of a different kind of yo-yo I did not know existed – unresponsive yo-yos.

Unresponsive yo-yos have a wider gap and bearing, which allows them to not return from sleep while being jerked around. This is handy for doing all sorts of crazy tricks. Then when you’re done flailing around, you do a specific type of bind to get the yo-yo to return to your hand.

Seemingly by accident I have now amassed 13 14 yo-yos.

Another aspect of this that I did not expect was the incredible amount of trick tutorials and yo-yo information out there. From YouTube channels to an extremely dedicated subreddit, there is no shortage of interesting (and supportive) people out there doing cool things with yo-yos.

Yo-yos I’ve liked so far

• YoyoFactory Replay & Replay Pro I like the weight & feel of the Replay. Nice and big; pretty comfortable. This is the yo-yo I buy for people when I think they should try them out.
• YoYoFactory DV888 My favorite responsive metal yoyo so far. Smaller than you’d expect, but feels great. I kind of want to get another one in this color way.
• Caribou Lodge Dune Kind of ridiculous how expensive this one is, but it feels so nice. This is the first “fancy” yo-yo I bought and I do not regret it. One thing I’ve learned is that in Canada someone has the copyright to “yo-yo” so they call them “return tops”. Super weird.
• Recess FIRST BASE This is a perfect starter yo-yo that comes with a size C bearing to convert it to unresponsive. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how great this yo-yo feels, even for being $20.

The thing I like about Gunpla (short for Gundam Plastic Models) is that it’s basically LEGO with an extra element of craft involved. You need to be a little careful cutting out the parts, but also you can use markers to make the paneling pop out more. It’s sort of like manual Ambient Occlusion in a way.

Kaitlin & I were at the MoPOP a while ago and in the horror exhibit there were a bunch of plastic model runners on the walls. Seeing them up there kinda jogged my memory about how its kinda fun to put together models.

Also, I’ve been playing a lot of Overwatch lately and really like this awesome Gundam-inspired Pharah skin. I was looking for some sort of Pharah figure, but all of the ones available aren’t that great.

So I figured I would just cut to the chase and build a Gundam.

Now, a month later, I’ve built 4 and bought 8 different ones. I started with a pretty basic small one, but eventually got into the 1/100 scale Master Grade Gundams. I really like the level of detail in the MG ones compared to the smaller guys. Everything is just a little bit higher quality.

Now the main problem is that I’m running out of space on my desk for these things.