The Story of Stingray

Stingray Specs

The release date of Stingray is Feb 6th, 8 PM EST.

The story and design of Stingray starts from the Koi. Koi is our organic monometal that combines the classic organic flowy, floaty feel with power and stability. To achieve the performance of the Koi, we used a unique center hub design that added weight for acceleration, a lot of rim weight for power and stability, high overall weight for even more enhanced power and stability. 

In early 2023, we think we can make the Koi perform even better. Our idea is to make the Koi an inner ring bimetal while keeping the original dimensions. Our goal at that time is to match the power of Koi while making the yoyo a lot more agile. To achieve that we lowered the weight by almost 2 grams. The result is very interesting, while the player team thinks there is indeed performance improvement in the aspect of speed, half of the team thinks the improvement was not enough. We think the modest improvement over the original Koi does not warrant a new yoyo for production. 

In early to mid 2024, we want to retry this project. This time we took a different approach to tackle the little performance improvements going from monometal to bimetal. First we changed the dimension of the yoyo, going both larger in diameter and wider in width. This will increase power and stability in general as more weight is now distributed further away from the center. Second, we used an undercut on the inner stainless steel ring. This reshaping made the rim weight even pushed further to the outside. Finally, we want to make up for the speed lost from added dimension and the rim weight. To combat this we changed more than one third of the profile from organic to V shape, thus enhancing the agility and speed of the yoyo. We put these plans into action and created the prototype 2. 

The prototype 2 came out perfect and our plan to use a hybrid shape succeeded. This yoyo perfectly blended the modern performance and the classic organic shape. The yoyo is powerful, agile and flowy at the same time. A significant improvement over the Koi.  After the player team test, we all think it is good enough for production. 

For the name we want to keep the theme of Koi. We also want this name that represents performance while being classy. Stingray came to mind as it reminds us of the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. A car series spanning form the late 1950s till now. It blends the look, tradition and the performance all into one, just like this yoyo. 

We hope you can both the organic feel and the high end modern bimetal performance of the stingray.