yoyofriends has a long history of making yo-yos that utilize titanium, including the TiSS Hummingbird, Ti Sunbird, and more recently the Alliance. Titanium is a popular material for yoyo construction, but it comes with a significant cost, making it less accessible for many people. In order to make a titanium yoyo that is more affordable and enjoyable, the yoyofriends team decided to create a mini undersized yoyo. The first prototype was based on the Alliance and featured a diameter of 44.5mm with Koi's inner cup, as well as a groove on the outer rim design for aesthetics. To make the yoyo truly accessible to everyone, yoyofriends reached out to André from Yoyoexpert to collaborate on the design. Wanting to incorporate elements of their most successful model, the Hummingbird, the team worked to create a yoyo that was both fun and unique. After two months of testing from the yoyofriends players and Yoyoexpert, the team realized that the yoyo needed more power, so they increased the overall weight of the yoyo and optimized the design with inspiration from the original design. Through this process, two prototypes emerged: a 37mm design with straight rims, and a 39mm design with more rounded rims. After further testing, the 39mm design proved to be the standout. It was more comfortable to catch, slightly more powerful, and it featured a unique weight distribution with the rounded rims. The team's goal was to make a titanium yoyo more accessible to everyone and spread the characteristics of titanium and other materials. With the completion of this project, they believe that they have achieved that goal. The artwork for the project, TiNY, depicts the yoyo being worked on in a lab in a petri dish, which serves as a reminder of how long the project took and how many tests it had been through until the final production.
