Observations

[studio42]

Last week my kid started soccer practices on Wednesday. I had a few new items that needed to be photographed, which were a Spintastics HP Hornet with bearing tip(thanks Jack for the link!) and a handful of new yoyos including the One Drop Citizen(#71). I take a more "studio" type picture of each top and a pre-set series of angled shots for yoyos, and then I take a single outdoor image of everything for a project I am working on.

Compared to most parents, I'm a bit older, as I didn't get married until I was 30. That makes most of the parents around in their mid 20's to mid-30's. I didn't realize this age difference had so many other differences.

1: Of course, I expect people to be ignorant of yoyos because unless they are into it, they won't know all the stuff going on. My skills are pathetic at best, but I can do some stuff. People were amazed that a yoyo could do that kind of stuff.

2: Of course, the HP Hornet bearing tip was with me, as well as a Sophia, STB 2.0 and a fixed bearing Quicksilver Hybrid. Nobody had seen spintops before. I found this to not be unusual. I myself was practically unaware of spintops until shortly after I got involved in yoyo. Yoyo is far more "mainstream" while spintops for some reason just aren't out there the same way. The only times I had met people with prior spin top exposure had been immigrants from Mexico and further south who had played with them when they were kids, often in those "beat up a top" type games, but they weren't really doing much more than those kind of things.

It's difficult to get people into skill toys. I think kendama picked up quickly due to the apparent "ease of play". Where I live, there was a massive push and the region went kendama crazy. The trend has pretty much passed and the odd part was most of the kendama kids moved onto yoyo, but now they've just "move on" completely. Yoyo just kinda plugs along, always there. But spintops? No idea why they haven't had a bigger user-base. They are harder to get started with, that's for sure. Took my 2 years just to throw a spinner properly, but I just stopped and took the time to give tops my focus and I had it down in a month of hard work.

It's difficult to get kids into decent yoyos and even Bearing King spin tops because it's like you "gotta know exactly where to go/look" and they aren't everywhere. Mail order just isn't a viable option for starting out because the enthusiasm can wane while the package is in transit. I think the best we can hope for is to expose kids and parents to all these different wonderful skill toys by enjoying them in safe public settings(such as in a park for example). Those that are interested will express an interest and ask for more information.  With my kids also back to school, I'm at the school with spin tops again, as well as yoyos.

The new Energia series of promos are a step in the right direction, but there's two problems:
1: Too long, but those can be edited down. I like the full length videos, but we have to think of what a 30-second television ad would need to show, which they could definitely re-edit for.
2: Are these being shown on broadcast? Honestly, it works. They aren't shown in the United States because they aren't released here yet. While my kids are watching lame kids programming, I see ad for crappy toy after crappy toy. Why not a skill toy ad? Kendama has been over-done for now, but they are also readily available in many places. Yoyo always needs a bump, and tops offer an alternative to those "who want to be different".

Anyhow, enough pondering. I have to hit the road and do sound production and mix for a small concert. I will be calling Thad at Bird In Hand to discuss US Nationals, to secure my doing the job. I will bring up spintops as an afterthought kinda thing if time allows while my crew gets the gear set.

[Jack]

the pctures you mentioned sound very interesting 

[ta0]

I believe spintops in the US need something equivalent to the "auto-return yo-yo" that helped start the last yo-yo boom in 1998; something that advertises on TV and has a low threshold to get involved. I think it will happen one day.