You made me play with it (I don't recall when was the last time I did). Even spinning it on the floor was not trivial (it is easier to snap start). Getting a boomerang took me tens of tries
I finally nailed a couple. The longest probably spun like 7 seconds on my hand.
The reason the top did not come back to your hand is that the "neck" of the tip is very thick. Because the string is pulling further away from the axle, your pull tends to rotate the top, not pull it backwards. This is always a problem with tops that have this characteristic. The solution is to not give it much momentum forward and to pull hard. By the way, I used the thick string of a koma and that helps (just a few wraps, no higher then the second revolution of the spiral).
The drawing instructions on how to spin it don't seem very helpful. It would seem that you have to twist the wrist and pull back
after the top is released from the string!
Something that I first found surprising was that when spinning I could see black circles around the top. The wiggle marking is a spiral and you wouldn't expect that. On close inspection (at least on mine) the spiral is not uniform but one one side it is almost horizontal.
