The Story of HELIX
HELIX Specs
| Material： | 6061AL |
| Total weight： | 65.8 g± 0.5g |
| Diameter： | 55.7mm |
| Width： | 458.00mm |
| Gap width： | 4.50mm |
| Axle： | M4* 8mm |
| Bearing： | Concave bearing |
| Pad size: | 19.2*14.2*1.2 mm |
Release date: April 9th 8PM EST
Price：29.99~33.99 USD
Introducing the yoyofriends Helix, our budget monometal fingerspin yoyo for everyone. The idea of this project started back in 2024, when we visited Japan. Our great retail partner REWIND asked if Strand can be made into a monometal yoyo. Strand has a very complicated design as seen in our previous story. We attempted to design it but was not successful.
In September of 2025, we communicated with our great retail partner Yoyoexpert. They suggested it would be nice to have a budget friendly fingerspin yoyo. Where the finger locks into the center hub. They felt our current monometal budget yoyos of shortcut (for intermediate players) and Ultracut (for advanced / pro players) are great. However, we are missing a durable, good ole fashioned monometal that can pull off DNA with ease.
We have attempted similar projects before, Paragraph. Paragraph is a great budget monometal performer, but the fingerspin capability is doable, but not ideal. It lacks the lock in mechanism. We attempted another design based on the paragraph, utilizing a deeper fingerspin hub and steeper slope around the center cup. The result was poor. The yoyo neither played great nor had meaningful fingerspin improvement, especially when locking in. Especially the performance department, it felt sluggish when accelerating and lagged behind in movement.
We then went back to the drawing board. Since the yoyo was sluggish, we changed the profile to V shape. This guarantees speed and acceleration increase. We also completely revamped the center cup. Adding a lock in mechanism in the center. The prototype is then made. Multiple yoyofriends player proceeded to test the yoyo. The feedback on the performance exceeded expectations. The yoyo has power and speed without much compromise. However the fingerspin capability is still not ideal. Although the yoyo is easier to lock in, the fingerspin hub is just not deep enough. This results in vibration when doing a fingerspin. This prototype version was also sent to both yoyoexpert and Rewind for testing. The feedback from both retailers is the fingerspin capability is still subpar, especially for a novice yoyoer. Rewind even said this is not good enough to go into production from a fingerspin capability perspective.
We are now at a crossroad. Do we keep the shape and try to slightly improve the depth of the fingerspin hub, or do we change the shape and massively increase the depth? We then considered the point of this yoyo is to fingerspin. Pure performance driven budget monometal is already taken by Shortcut and Ultracut in our lineup. We proceeded to incorporate the H shape into the existing V shape. Increased the depth of the fingers spin hub and slightly reduced the inner slope into the center. We kept the dimension and the weight so the yoyo would perform somewhat similar and be within budget.
The result is a slight decrease in speed and acceleration but massively improved fingerspin. It passed the test from the players, Rewind, and Yoyoexpert.
For production, we also slightly reduce the sharpness of the inner response area and the outer rim for better feel.
