What a Bunch of Yo-Yos! : High-Tech Tricksters and Some Unlikely Supporters Are Putting a New Spin on an Age-Old Toy

Why did Tom Kuhn build a 256-pound yo-yo? What makes Michael Caffrey think kids will prefer yo-yos to Nintendo?

And what in God’s name is Pastor Dennis McBride doing with a yo-yo during Sunday service?

Making it “sleep,” of course. (Now that should keep parishioners awake.)

“I was in the Philippines for a convention, and they actually asked me to do a yo-yo demonstration before I preached,” said McBride, 49, who heads Trinity Baptist Church in Solvang and stars in his own yo-yo instructional videos.

“So, I brought the yo-yo out, and the response was great. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t do that. I try not to trivialize the Gospel.”

Go ahead and say it: They’re a bunch of yo-yos. How else to describe a fraternity whose most notable member is comedian Tommy Smothers?

On second thought, don’t say it. Let’s not trivialize the yo-yo, either. Such talk would amount to blasphemy for a handful of--shall we say, a bit eccentric?--individuals whose imaginations are kept gyrating well into middle age by one of the world’s oldest and simplest toys.

The yo-yo, said to have originated in China 500 years before the birth of Christ, is as identifiable as the moon to all who walk the Earth. Who hasn’t tried their hand at walking the dog or shooting the moon, or tested their mettle against the class hotshot during recess?

“Its appeal is that it’s just a great toy,” said Daniel Volk, 47, of San Francisco, who ranks as one of the world’s most skilled yo-yo performers and has tallied more than 8,000 performances on six continents. “The yo-yo has great play value.”

True to its nature, the yo-yo might be making a comeback.

In April, Duncan Toys, the world’s largest yo-yo maker, launched a national advertising campaign in an attempt to entice members of the video-game generation. Caffrey, the company’s national sales and marketing manager, plans to follow by bringing back Duncan’s team of yo-yo demonstrators, adroit professionals who for decades appeared at drugstores and shopping malls across the country.

Duncan’s annual sales have declined from a high of about $20 million in the 1960s to a current low of about $5 million.

“I believe sincerely that the yo-yo’s time has come--or come again,” Caffrey said.

Last fall, Dale Oliver of Seattle, a former Duncan demonstrator, formed the American Yo-Yo Assn., which will sanction three national competitions this year.

And Smothers--whose alter-ego, “The Yo-Yo Man,” has become the most popular feature of the Smothers Brothers’ concert and television act during the past several years--recently purchased the movie rights to the life story of Donald F. Duncan, the man who virtually introduced Americans to yo-yos in 1929.

“I was always in competitions when I was a kid but never a winner,” said Smothers, 57, who teamed with brother Dick and Volk to produce a yo-yo video. “I consider myself--to use golf lingo--to be about a 6 handicap. You take the Daniel Volks and those guys, they’re scratch yo-yoists.”

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Give a man a yo-yo, and he’ll amuse himself for about 10 minutes. Teach a man to yo-yo, and there’s no telling what he might do--work up an act, play Las Vegas, wax philosophic, cop an attitude, maybe even reinvent the spinning spool on a string with automatic return mechanisms, adjustable string gaps and ball-bearing transaxles.

Which brings us back--like a sharply slung Duncan Butterfly on a taut string--to Kuhn, a prominent San Francisco dentist and former teen-age yo-yo champion who one day found himself with too much time and no yo-yo to his liking on his hands. So, he boned up on Newtonian physics and put a spin on traditional yo-yo making.

Since launching Tom Kuhn Yo-Yos Ltd. in 1977, Kuhn has developed 20 high-performance and, in some cases, high-priced yo-yos, most with quirky features and kooky names--such as the Roller Woody ($35), Sleep Machine ($40) and the Silver Bullet ($40).

“I wanted to design a yo-yo for all seasons, so to speak,” Kuhn said. “I wanted a good dynamic yo-yo that would also be good for string tricks.”

Kuhn’s wooden No-Jive 3-In-1 ($18), like many of his creations, is a “take-apart,” meaning its halves can be removed from the axle and reattached to form three configurations.

The Silver Bullet 2, Kuhn’s super-spinning, $75 flagship model, is as about as high-tech as a yo-yo can get. Crafted from aircraft aluminum, it features a ball-bearing transaxle. Simply stated, the yo-yo’s halves are attached to an axle that spins within a metal sleeve to which the string is attached.

The SB-2 has been known to spin--or “sleep” in yo-yo speak--for the better part of two minutes.

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Kuhn’s enthusiasm is nearly boundless. In 1979, he built what was then the world’s largest yo-yo, a 256-pound, 50-inch-high wooden replica of the No-Jive 3-In-1 that was lowered from San Francisco’s Pier 39 from a 120-foot crane.

Kuhn has even traveled to Houston to query NASA officials on the finer points of shooting the moon in a zero-gravity environment. In 1992, astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman gave the SB-2 a whirl aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

Kuhn isn’t the only one to tinker with tradition. In 1985, Caffrey, who went to work as a Duncan demonstrator right out of high school, invented the Yomega ($10), which features a centrifugal-force-activated “clutch” that allows the yo-yo to sleep for about 30 seconds before it automatically returns to the hand.

Even Donald F. Duncan Jr., who started his own yo-yo company, Playmaxx, in 1988, has thrown a high-tech entry into the ring. Duncan’s ProYo, a take-apart that features a replaceable brass axle, has been lauded for its spinning ability.

Although such yo-yos have found their place in the market, some purists consider some of them offensive. Smothers works the No-Jive 3-In-1 and the original Silver Bullet into his act because they show well on stage. But they are for more advanced players, he said.

“I’m pretty much a traditionalist,” Smothers said. “I believe that to make yo-yos popular again, you gotta put the original Duncan 44’s (a beginner’s model) in kids’ hands.”

Precisely the plan of Caffrey, who sold his interest in Yomega Corp. in 1987 and recently rejoined Duncan. The company’s ad campaign was born largely from Caffrey’s hunch that today’s youths will find yo-yos, most of which cost only about $3, new and exciting.

“Your typical 12-year-old has had a video game in his home for five or six years,” Caffrey said. “But he’s probably never seen a yo-yo (operated) well.”

For starters, Caffrey randomly selected 500 Indianapolis youngsters and mailed them free “training kits,” including a yo-yo, a trick book, a video and a letter offering them $25 if they can perform three basic tricks during one of his promotional visits to the area.

Duncan’s television commercials, airing in the Midwest and expected to debut in Southern California early next year, portray kids whirling yo-yos as cool and those holding joysticks as nerds.

“I don’t know much, but I know yo-yos,” said Caffrey, 36, who was twice crowned Arizona state champion by Duncan, at age 14 and 15. “In order to sell, they need to be demonstrated. My experience tells me that all yo-yo crazes begin with an 11-year-old kid showing (his) friends how to walk the dog and rock the baby in the schoolyard.”

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If Caffrey’s hunch pays off, the slip loop might be passed to a new generation of yo-yo players.

Volk, who appeared as “Yo Master” on the Smothers Brothers’ series of television specials in 1988 and ‘89, has gained such status that he was reluctant at first to be interviewed for this story. “I’d rather not be lumped together with my imitators,” he said.

McBride works a yo-yo into Sunday school lessons as a method of emphasizing the importance of responding to God’s will. “I do some tricks and then set the yo-yo down and command it to do the same tricks,” he said. “Obviously, it can’t.”

Even Kuhn, “Dr. Yo” to friends, concedes that he is “probably a bit nuts” about yo-yos. He almost always carries one in his pocket, reaching for it between his dental patients the way some people reach for a cigarette.

Serious yo-yo players have even been known to spin themselves into a near-religious state, a meditative dimension in which the very nature of existence is contemplated. It has even been given a name: the State of Yo.

“There is a certain philosophy of Yo,” Kuhn said. “There’s something about a yo-yo spinning through space that ties us into ourselves. We realize the entire universe is spinning. The State of Yo is universally accepted.”

At least, in yo-yo circles.