Guide to yo-yo play and culture.
The Hyper Cluster yoyos are a series of interchangeable parts that can be mixed and matched for maximum customizability. The model I’m playing with today is the Hyper Cluster Wing model. This is a basic model at its core, with better playing variations like the BlazeGriffon having more advanced features like heavier rim weighting for better spin times. These are only officially available in Japan and are part of Bandai’s Hyper Yoyo campaign.
The way it works is you pick a body shape, you pick your bearing and response guts, then you twist them together to fit as one half, then screw the yoyo together. To illustrate what I mean is that for my glow Wing, I have two matching glow Wing shells, one starburst response gut, and one pad response gut. The two different response types fit the same on the shell, so you can do more than just swap colors.
What makes the glow in the dark version special is that you couldn’t outright buy this yoyo when it came out. In shops where this product is sold, you could buy individual Wing shells. The shell being the gutted half. To make things more interesting, the boxes these single shells came in are blacked out, so you have no idea what color you are getting. If you buy two of these blind shells you are very likely to have a two toned Hyper Cluster yoyo. As for the glow in the dark, well glow in the dark shells were only in 1 out of every 10 packs, and not sold as sets. You had to keep opening blind packs to hopefully score a glow shell, and once you got one…you had to do it all over again if you wanted a matching yoyo. Pretty brutal if you don’t have a ton of money and are really trying to score that rarity, but far more satisfying if you do.
In terms of play, this is a more basic model and plays as such. It does have a bearing and I can do a ton on this thing, but it comes with greater concentration. A yoyo like this is better off only doing the classic string tricks anyway. The plastic is really glossy and truly feels like a toy, and I play it as such with more whimsical tricks than a more serious throw.
Unfortunately the glow is pretty shite. The glow is hard to charge and loses its brightness pretty quickly, so that is definitely a bummer. It took me hitting the yoyo with a bright flash unit and utilizing burst mode on my camera to get the brightest glow of out this, and even then I did just a little photoshopping to bring out the green a tad more. This was in pitch blackness though and the yoyo would hopefully fair better under a blacklight where it doesn’t NEED to glow as bright.
It’s still a fun toy and while it’s shortcomings leave something to be desired, I still have a glow in the dark Hyper Cluster Wing and you don’t. Neener, neener.