Sniffy-Yo Yoyo Video Reviews: July's Yoyo Maker Focus

Original Small Run Engraved Mary
(photo thanks to Vegabomb)

July has different meanings in different areas of the world. In America we all run around like lunatics shooting fireworks at each other.

In England, July of 787 A.D. the sighting of coconut laden African swallows was first recorded.

In ancient Sumeria their name for the month is loosely translated as the "Culture of bees" which is when people living in the more densely populated areas would bring their bees into an open forum and yell at each other for 3 straight days. One theory behind this strange ritual is Sumer being one of the most populated areas near the Persian gulf was a main distribution and storage area for rye, which by spring had molded forming ergot. Seriously, look it up. It's also why the Salem witch trials started and ended so abruptly.

Here at sniffy this July is the first of my series on small elite end Yoyo makers. I'll be featuring a different small Yoyo company each month, this month I'll be focusing on I Love Yoyo.

ILYY is a German company which designs some of the world's highest quality, precision made yoyos. Their designs are extremely unique, almost all of them have very smooth and sweeping curves with very few hard lines to interrupt the flowing curves. Their hubs are generally rounded and wide, sweeping evenly into the cup. This type of design is extremely expensive and time consuming to machine, which I personally feel is only slightly reflected in their prices. Considering the cost of shipping from Germany, and time spent on the lathe, ILYY could easily be setting their product at a higher price point.

In terms of branding, each ILYY Yoyo comes in a velvet pouch. The pouch is worth mentioning here because just like the consistent and sincere quality of their product, their pouches are fully velvet lined both outside and inside; as opposed to cheaper velvet pouches which are usually velvet on the outside and scratchy nylon on the inside, which itself can damage a fragile finish.

ILYY also uses their own unique response, the Hot Red SILLYcone. This is one of my favorite responses, it's not too hard, but not soft, and is very precise in its binding. This is a proprietary response that's unique only to Ilyy products.

Another thing I want to mention here is what I call the ILYY floating donut illusion, pictured below. This is an illusion that every ILYY with a rounded hub Yoyo has. It's especially visible in the Candy Blasted versions, at a certain angle of light the hub appears to be recessed into a protruding ring in the cup.

The floating donut effect in the Lio 2012 and 2wei

Frank referred me to the YoyoWiki for the early history of ILYY
I snagged that text and am posting it here..

'''ILOVEYOYO''' (or '''ILYY''') was founded in August 2006 by rage (aka raytsh), a student of media technology at TU Ilmenau, and crackout, a student of physics at TU Munich, who also ran the entire company. The main idea behind this project was to create a yoyo for themselves that would meet the preferences of both of them. This then developed into a yo-yo manufacturer that sells internationally.

Their first product, the E1NS was not intended for public release but after positive feedback at the 2007 GYYA Eastercamp a batch of 60 yo-yos was released on June 29th 2007. 34 of them sold out in a matter of 10 minutes causing server crash at Yoyonation.

As of the 18th of December 2008 ILYY has released 2 other new yoyos, the Mary which is raytsh's signature yoyo and the Wasabi which is crackout's signature. Then there is the Noctu which is still in prototyping stage and the E1NS.1 which is an improved version of the E1NS. In addition to that there was the E1NS PURE which was a prototype that was super heavy.

The company has continued to produce some of the highest quality yoyos on the market.

Being ILYY Yoyos can be tough to find, I decided to make a list of yoyos available and where to find them:

Valve, Greyhound, Torino, Void and Enigma: YoyoExpert

Greyhound, Lios, Lynx, Void and St.eels: YoyoShop

Greyhound, Lios, Valve, Void and Enigma: Yoyo Store Rewind

Mary, 2011 Lios, St.eel, 09 Eins, Greyhound, SB Enigma and Falcon: La Tienda Del Yoyo

Here are photos of the different models still available:

(thanks to YoyoExpert for sending me these photos)