YoyoJam Fiesta Review by Luke Roberts

 As many of you know – Offstring has now become one of my favourite styles of yo-yo play in recent months and it’s currently the style I practise the most above all others. I have been messing around with Offstring for several years, and along the way I have used pretty much every available yo-yo out there which has been made specifically for Offstring play.

Recently, however, there has been a considerable subsidence in the release of Offstring yo-yos, this was why I was so excited about this latest release from YoyoJam – the producers of the renouned Aquarius yo-yo, which was a staple for Offstring players since it’s original release.

What follows will be my own, personal opinion, of this new signature release of US National 4A champion Brian Figueroa from YoyoJam.

Specs:

Weight 68.8 Grams
Diameter 77mm
Width 49.6mm
Bearing 12 x 3.5 x 8 mm
Response modified starburst
Gap Adjustable

(courtesy of YoyoZ.co.uk)

Design:

When I first heard that this yo-yo was essentially a plastic Aquarius – I have to admit I was a tad dismayed. Although the Aquarius had been the most popular Offstring yo-yo for competitive play – it personally was not one of my favourites. After playing with other OS yo-yos like the Griffin Wing and the Big Yo, the Aquarius felt noticeably smaller and narrow. Similarly as it used an old style small YYJ bearing, this meant there was not a lot of scope to make the gap very wide (which is handy for some of the more recent Offstring tricks), and I personally found the Aquarius seemed to snag quite a bit.

Although it’s true, the Fiesta is essentially a plastic Aqua, it is very slightly larger and very slightly lighter (see picture below). And as a bonus, the bearing it uses is slightly bigger. I have found this to make a huge difference – not only does it barely snag at all when doing tricks like recaptures, binds and regen tricks – it means you can fit more layers of string into the gap allowing for a greater variation of tricks to be performed.

 The fact that this yo-yo is made entirely out of celcon is great. Contrary to popular belief – most players do prefer their OS yo-yos to be plastic (rather than rubber) – as during practise this means when you drop the yo-yo, it will more than likely spin on the spot (due to the reduced friction) allowing you time to recover without having to go running down the road to catch it! As opposed to rubber ones, which will be more than happy to bounce over into your neighbour’s yard…. the same yard with the vicious Rottweiler called Princess who could maul your face off….. so yeah; plastic is definitely a bonus.

Not only that – but being Celcon it’s fantastic for grinding. I’ve certainly found it to be the best OS yo-yo for grinding out of all the ones I have tried, meaning that I think we can expect to see more of these kinds of tricks to come about in freestyles in the future.

Aesthetics:

I only wanted to briefly touch on this, as I personally am never really bothered what a yo-yo looks like colour/graphics wise, but appreciate a lot of people do.

The fiesta currently comes in 2 colours – red and white – fairly standard stuff. The pogs are foil and are not held in place with any form of plastic cover as with most YoyoJams. Despite this, they are held in fairly securely, and despite the number of drops I’ve had and things I’ve hit, the pog has only ever popped out once.

The graphic on the pog is nothing revolutionary, but it’s nice and fits with the fiesta theme. The holo part is nice as when spinning it looks like it just has a reflective centre. Again – nothing amazing about this – but I know for myself that when performing on stage (especially to a large crowd) anything that makes the yo-yo more visible is better.

Performance:

Thankfully – despite looking like an Aquarius – it plays considerably different to an Aquarius. It does have a similar feel, so Aqua fans will still be happy (especially after production of the Aqua ceased) – but for people like myself, it has enough differences to keep me happy!

Straight out of the box the sleep times on this yo-yo are fantastic. I usually find that with any of my OS yo-yos I have to do the standard procedure of taking out the guts, giving them a good clean, and then lightly oiling them afterwards. Not the case with these. From the off I was able to perform perfect, stable releases and catches, excellent spin time (more than I ever got my with my old Aquas), strong binds and (best of all for me), minimal to no snagging!

As I mention snagging quite a bit, I thought I would briefly mention what it is in OS terms. Essentially with many tricks (a prime example being recapture), the yo-yo needs to glide along the string in such away as to not bind return to the hand. In others (such as regen tricks), you are bind returning the yo-yo (usually with just the one hand), but need to be able to throw the yo-yo out again fairly rapidly. In any of these cases, having the yo-yo either prematurely bind return, or bind too tightly as to form a fake knot around the axle (which can usually be thrown out with a couple of hard throws) are what I refer to as the yo-yo ‘snagging’ – see an example video of these kinds of tricks below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tac0cGP7ek

I found the Aquarius was prone to snagging – granted you could try and widen the gap which would help, but then you would get considerable kickback when throwing, and it made regen tricks much harder to do.

I’ve now been consistently using this yo-yo on a near daily basis since it’s release – it’s been bashed, scratched, punched, kicked, dropped from heights, and it’s still playing exactly the same as the day I received it. Although you would expect a yo-yo meant for OS to be durable – some (such as the Griffin Wing) can be surprisingly fragile, and if they land at the wrong angle can break quite easily. So thankfully the Fiesta is able to maintain it’s performance despite a lot of rough play.

Comparisons:

Granted, I have spent a lot of time in this review comparing the Fiesta to the Aquarius – this is mostly due to the large amount of similarities between the two – and I don’t want to sound like I am Aqua-bashing (as it’s been the weapon of choice for most National and World OS champions), so lets take a brief look at it against other OS yo-yos:

(From left: Hayabusa, Aquarius, Fiesta, Griffin Wing, BigYo)

Although the shots aren’t great, you can get a rough idea of the size difference between the various yo-yos.

Hayabusa:

The Hayabusa is a yo-yo that has come to earn great acclaim, and was largely made popular due to one player – Lim Aik Whee (check him out in the below video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-S_508SXuU

The Hayabusa is smaller, but has a wider bearing. The problem I always had is that due to my slightly large frame *cough* I always have to use long strings when playing OS – and unfortunately the Hayabusa doesn’t cope well in that area from what I have experienced. However, on normal length strings you can see it’s a beast.

Griffin Wing:

The Griffin Wing is heavier, wider, and has a slightly smaller rim then the Fiesta. The major downside for me on this yo-yo was the fact that they broke easily. This yo-yo is also rubber so is unable to grind.

BigYo:

This is another very popular OS yo-yo, largely due to it’s size which makes it a lot easier to catch for whips then a yo-yo the size of the Fiesta. The downside compared to the Fiesta is that due to it’s size, it makes it a lot easier to do some of the OS style tech tricks, and is also pretty damn difficult to do regen tricks on as well.

Overall:

In the end – this yo-yo is definitely my favourite Offstring yo-yo to date. It does everything I want it to, it lends itself to my style of play very well, is durable, has long spins and doesn’t snag.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this yo-yo to someone brand new to Offstring, simply because I always think starting with a rubber yo-yo is better (and safer!), but this is only my personal view – I know many people who start off with BigYos and Hayabusa’s and don’t have any problems. However, for a younger player I’d always go for a rubber yo-yo.

There isn’t really much more praise I can give it really. The only things I would potentially like to have seen would be a different bearing (say along the lines of the Hayabusa style Duncan bearing) could have been nice, as it’s couple of extra millimetres of width make it flop style tricks, as it can take more string segments then the Fiesta can even at it’s widest setting.

I highly, highly recommend this yo-yo. I think anyone who gets it will be greatly satisified, and it’s helped me no end when learning many regen tricks which I was finding difficult on other yo-yos. So if you’ve managed to stay awake through my waffle – go buy one, at around £15 there is no excuse for any yo-yoer NOT to have one.