Nimbi are back...

... and assembly started on Friday. We are still waiting on a couple of CUs, we have a lot, but not enough for the orders we have. They should arrive any day now, they have been shipped. So things are a bit delayed, but with some luck these should ship to retailers sometime this week.

Wood is good

I ran across the other Alchemy, The Alchemy Project, a while back and promptly forgot about it. Last night I was reminded of their yo-yo by a fellow Alchemist and it being a slow news day, decided to post it. This is what they have to say under the heading of The Return of the yo-yo:

Forget Second Life, forget the Playstation and Nintendo Wi, don’t you ever wish we could sometimes go back to basics? At the Alchemy Project we decided to do just this and have created our very own yo yo for your pleasure.

Simply drop us an email or give us a ring and we’ll send you one out direct to your door!

Just a simple wooden yo-yo with a very nice intricate logo, simple effective, and best of all it comes back up. Since I haven't given my Playstation the attention it deserves lately, I should actually take them up on their offer.

The better to CU with my dear

All the Alchemists are having fun with hubstacks lately. Eric is at it this time - modifying a CU. CU, Alchemy FHZ hubstack kit, YYF T-stacks. He says it best, so I'm not even going to try and summarize. (I even stole his topic)

So, what you have here starts with a CU with a HEAVILY modified Alchemy hub stack kit. The post/nuts were machined down so that the outer edge of the stack sits inside the outer edge of the yo-yo rim. Then I took a set of YYF T-stacks and reduced the diameter so that they would fit inside the rim with a little clearance (I’ll bet I’m the only person on the planet that has a jam chuck for hub stacks – you turners will know what I mean). Then I scanned the CU eye image from the lid of the box it came in, enlarged it slightly, and printed it on self-adhesive clear label stock. Then I laminated the label stock, stuck the images on the modded T-stacks, and trimmed it around the outside.

Product Updates

Just a quick note on the availability of the CU and Nimbus at retailers.

The CU should be ready to ship to retailers through the course of next week - we do have orders from Australia, UK, USA, Taiwan and a host of other countries. (Details as to the specific retailers will be announced as we ship, we just want to give everybody a chance to get their orders in. At the same time our retailer page needs an update, but that will happen at the same time.)

The Nimbus will be a bit delayed. We are not 100% comfortable with the workmanship on all the items, so we sent them back. On our part this means frustration, longer time-to-market and extra costs, but the end-result will be a product that meets our standards.

We are sponsors of the 2007 US National Yo-yo Contest and are aiming to have some Nimbi available at the contest, however, things need to be 100% right... We are also hoping to have some protos for future models available for testing, but I'll update on that bit as soon as we are sure of what models we believe are ready for wider testing.

Sightings

Some Alchemy sightings and reviews from around the yo-yo web... The ExtremeSpin forum has reviews for both the 4th generation Silk and well as the CU. The last review contains one of my all-time favourite quotes:

Ok, well first when I received this yo,.....I was kinda disappointed. lol Seriously I looked down into my palm where sat a micro sized yo no bigger than my keychain FH. Thinking to myself $**t I just paid $65 for something this small?!?

I had almost exactly the same thoughts when I first received the first protos, although mine was more along the lines of "What were we thinking??!!".

O, yes, before you ask - we are trying to keep Rob as busy as possible, but he still finds time to do funny mods like this hubstacked Cyclotron. A very creative use of the Alchemy FHZ kits, slightly modified to fit in a slightly modified yo-yo. (And that is slightly modified to Rob, not to the rest of us...)

Update: I thought I'd add the pictures...

Wholesale orders

Well, it is order frenzy time. Wholesale orders for the first run Nimbus and 2nd run CU are coming in thick and fast. Expect to see these models (almost) everywhere in the very near future... sooner than you would expect.

I CU've been busy

So you already know that we have some Nimbi ready for assembly. Well, the factory is very busy - we also have batches and batches and batches of CU parts ready for action. Here is a picture of some of them, fully printed and ready for final assembly.



The problem with waiting for axles and bearings for final assembly (leaving unassembled halves floating around), is that little pictures consisting of CU halves mysteriously start appearing all-over:



Expect to see these fully assembled and packaged at a retailer near you soon.