GOYO Racer - what's this all about? Would you believe this is a yo-yo and something else,
which I bought in 2005, and I never looked at it! I mean it was a bit off-putting when you saw
the size of the instructions inside, which looked like that one side - you've got to read all those
and understand them - you're going to turn it over and read all those, and understand that as
well. I'm afraid I thought oh I'll do it later, and then later! I finally got around to doing it
about two nights ago. It's an astonishing bit of technology, quite extraordinary.
It's a yo-yo in which, due to a mechanism which I'll show, it can separate from the string;
either you can play with it as a normal yo-yo, or when it goes down, the string separates,
and the thing races across the table and rolls into things, as they suggest for kids to play.
So then it's just a rolling tyre; and when it's free of the strings, you can get it to
roll into a whole lot of a cans put on the table. Let's get a little bit closer to the camera...
So there's the actual wheel with no string attached to it, and there it's doing that and then
leaping over a thing with a ramp; there's a lot of fun you can do with just that, and nothing else,
but without the string. So how does it separate? Well, it's absolutely brilliant. Let me just show
the interior, and I'll demonstrate it. I'll do a yo-yo first to show it does properly yo-yo...
It's a reasonable yo-yo; I'm not very good at yo-yoing, it should really go over the hand,
but it doesn't sleep actually, although they say it should sleep; but i don't think it does;
so never mind. So it's a genuine yo-yo, and the string won't come off,
so what's going on inside? Well, something very very bizarre indeed; very very clever.
I'll just unroll it - that doesn't really give a clue - I can show you the interior;
but that thing you're looking at, that silver thing, is actually a 'C' clip would you believe;
and what you do is you push the black piece down like that, and you look for the lever and you
lift the lever up which makes a click sound, and now what's happened is the 'C' clip is released.
So what's happening inside is the spindle has got two different
thicknesses; one is like the barrel here where sticks firmly and won't come out;
and then when you pull the little lever you come to the thin section of the spindle,
and [the 'C' clip] can come out like that. Very very clever indeed. So when it's a yo-yo it's
held like that, when it's going to do its other game it has to be like that, and it comes out;
so to achieve that I dip it into here, and it will go over the thin part of the spindle - let's see
if that actually shows on the camera or not - now if I push that across,
you're getting a much thicker piece of the spindle coming across there like that,
and it's going to click when I push it, but I'll click it when I've actually got the string on.
And then it restores it like that - click - do you hear that little clicking...
maybe the lever has got to be down perhaps... yes there we are; so that's firmly fixed on again;
now, the fun is when you set it up again - you wind it up as an ordinary yo-yo; then what I'm
going to do is I've got to get that spindle into the thin section, so that when it's fully down
it leaps off the string; to do that I've got to push that in, and I push the lever up...
that is a yo-yo that is going to come off the string immediately...
I'll do it for you, and if you're doing a good job
it'll race across the floor; here is the yoyo coming down and then woooo...
it's gone across the floor and disappeared. That's an extraordinary device isn't it!
Quite extraordinary - for children to learn to do those games with something like that is, I think,
amazing; so I'm having a second and third look at this, big long instructions though they are;
it shows something very very unusual with a yoyo, the like of which I've never seen before. A yo-yo
which purposefully becomes detached, so it becomes a second toy, a rolling
wheel. A wonderful toy. How have I overlooked it all those 17 years? No excuse! [LAUGHS]