Duncan Yo-Yo's to release Footbag products

atze · Post by **atze** » 21 Dec 2005 16:09

probably because i've seen to much...done too much...argued these points too much...whatever.

we're all footbags, right? we're all pretty much into this sport, right? so why can't we take a step back and analyse this duncan thing objectively?

can't you see that they're disrespecting footbag??????

i see all the points you guys are making, and yes, i can accept them as valid in a sense. but still! they're disrespecting.

just look at the bags! they're a joke!!!! read the press release! they're making fun of everyone who has ever moved a muscle for "competitive footbag". And the worst thing: it wouldn't be hard work for them to do all that stuff sooo much better. it's all there. if they cared. they obviously don't.

and you're right, its my opinion, but i claim its an educated one.

Will Digges · Post by **Will Digges** » 21 Dec 2005 16:11

Any publicity towards footbag is good right now. We are a very small community and anything that mentions footbag is cool in my book. At least for now, we can worry about bigger and better promotion for footbag later on, when the companies start catching on to the real footbag scene.

hackeysnacker · Post by **hackeysnacker** » 21 Dec 2005 16:14

they're disrespecting footbag by making footbags widely available? does some kid who's never even kicked a footbag more than a couple times in a row really need a 35 dollar "proformance" footbag?

atze · Post by **atze** » 21 Dec 2005 16:18

why don't we make our own publicity?

why doesn't everyone get a bunch of flyers and promo material from daryl and take 1 day to walk into every juggling or sports shop they know and advertise daryls bags?
it's not difficult, it's not hard work, it would help footbag. it would take some initiative though...

i know at some point daryl even offered money for this, but i doubt there were many volunteers.

hackeysnacker · Post by **hackeysnacker** » 21 Dec 2005 18:35

money and volunteers cannot co-exist

duncan is not calling their product hackeysack
they are advertising the competitiveness of the sport
they are promoting freestyle footbag in particular
footbags will now be more widely available in your local area
what the fuck do u really want?

Guest_2 · Post by **Guest_2** » 21 Dec 2005 19:13

atze wrote:why doesn't everyone get a bunch of flyers and promo material from daryl and take 1 day to walk into every juggling or sports shop they know and advertise daryls bags?

I resemble that comment! I just recieved Air Traffic's business card and am calling them in the morning to sell myself as a demonstrator

Chim-Chim · Post by **Chim-Chim** » 21 Dec 2005 23:26

Josh, what is air traffic?

ptaku · Post by **ptaku** » 22 Dec 2005 07:39

I don't like the fact that they will sell them more as a toy, than sport equipment... And yeah... This is disrespecting for footbag...

But on the other hand? Some shitty soccerballs are beeing sold in toy shops too, and this isn't disrespecting for football... But soccer was well known as a sport before soccer balls have been sold as toys...

And seeling footbags as toys, before the sport will get common, can be very harmful for our sport. It will be linked more with just a game, and toys, and fun than with sport, and sweat and athletes.

Hard to say how this whole thing will affect footbag.

Guest_2 · Post by **Guest_2** » 22 Dec 2005 08:05

Jake Raye wrote:Josh, what is air traffic?

It's a game and juggling store

Iain · Post by **Iain** » 22 Dec 2005 09:08

No one is trying to give these companies credibility. They aren't selling footbags to help the sport, they're doing it to make money. You'd have to be a fool to expect a major company like that to do something for this sport. It comes as no surprise that they would try to make the cheapest possible footbag that can be past off as a playable.

It's like this for any sport or activity. You have these companies making shitty products for dirt cheap who try to sell to people who know nothing about the sport. The purpose this serves is to get people interested. This helps the sport in 2 ways:

1: It opens it up to more people, which leads to a bigger community, which leads to attendence to competitions, which will eventually lead to bigger public interest and recognition

2: This is the first step in getting more footbag companys that DO sell good footbags and at a competitive price. If you want to start up a business, you're going to start one where you know you will atract a lot of customers. A footbag only store would NOT be ideal for this, at least not at the moment. There still are not enough people. A major company like duncan or pepsi or whoever marketing in footbag just accelerates the process.

And who knows, if duncan gets good sales out of these footbags, mabey they'll invest more time into making better quality bags. There's no point in making a product that no one will buy

acxel22 · Post by **acxel22** » 22 Dec 2005 09:25

it beats buying a crochet bag for 10$ in a sport equipment store.
it looks better then a crochet bag
it gives you a CD telling you tricks, showing you that you can do more then KICK with it
you see ATLETHES on the CD, not beginners, so you see that this is SERIOUS even tought it's sold as a "toy"
It's affordable
It's commercialised, you dont have to google for one, or order via paypal and wait 3 weeks

And all of you whining, please tell me your first bag was a 32pannel from Felix, please all tell me you started to play guiltless on first day, and please tell me you where never a noob about footbag

And who learned about this sport by is own? By just developing abilities with a crochet bag without EVER seeing professional footbagers live/or on the net? Barely a couple..

So what they do is a cheap product to make money? They are a company, and it's their first goal! Please tell me the FootFighters guys make footbags to make footbaggers happy and do no profit.. right, what's the difference?

professor · Post by **professor** » 22 Dec 2005 11:04

ptaku wrote:I don't like the fact that they will sell them more as a toy, than sport equipment... And yeah... This is disrespecting for footbag...

But on the other hand? Some shitty soccerballs are beeing sold in toy shops too, and this isn't disrespecting for football... But soccer was well known as a sport before soccer balls have been sold as toys...

And seeling footbags as toys, before the sport will get common, can be very harmful for our sport. It will be linked more with just a game, and toys, and fun than with sport, and sweat and athletes.

I don't know about you, but I think of soccer(football) as a game. So is football(American), baseball, hockey, tennis, etc. These all began as just games, but then gained popularity, sponsership, companies making equipment for them, and then they became the sport we know them as today. I feel that since this company isn't giving false information about footbag, like a recent article I can think of, then nothing but good can come from this. I mean at least they're calling them footbags and they have the words "competition" written on them, hinting to the fact that there is more to footbag than just kicking a bag around as a game.

Little Billy is going to get one of these footbags for Christmas and start kicking it. He's going to get interested in what footbag is, since he's never heard of it before, and then he's going to get on google, type in "footbag" and find footbag.org like most of us here probably did.

So, is footbag a game? Yes. Is it also a sport? Yes. Is Duncan giving false information about the sport? Not that I've seen. So it's all good.

RawSko · Post by **RawSko** » 22 Dec 2005 13:32

Moxie wrote:If someone sees the word "footbag" and goes on google and searches for "footbag" they'll find .org and maybe Modified. It's publicity of the word and therefore can be good publicity for our sport.

You can type in "Hacky Sack" on google and find footbag.org too.

I remember how I found modified and f.org and all this stuff. I was a Hacky Slacker for a while, to start off, right? Several year back I had recieved a crochet bag for christmas with a book attatched to it. The book acctually said Footbag on it and had all the basic kicks listed in it. It explained why footbag is not Hacky Sack and it talked about how great the sport is and it talked about pro footbags and lavers! It had a link in it for footbag.org and I typed that into my computer after reading through the book a few times. I had seen live freestyle footbag before, so I knew it exsisted but I had always thought of it as something I could never do in a million years. Once I found f.org, thanks to this book, I found out about the fundamental tricks and I eased my way into the footbag world from there.

I think that I had been about to throw the book in the garbage while I was cleaning my room!!!

imagine what I'd be missing!! Thank god I took a second look at it... but it was forsure just a combination of lil things got me into the sport. That'd be really awsome if there was a link to modified or f.org or sumthing on the packaging for these duncan bags. Even without that though, it's brought us slightly closer to the public eye and I definately see this whole project as a very, very good thing.

Keep it real

Jorden · Post by **Jorden** » 22 Dec 2005 13:38

Depending on how this product goes over with the general public, it may be a GREAT resource and reference point on how to properly and effectively market our sport.

$0.02

kickstart · Post by **kickstart** » 23 Dec 2005 13:08

professor wrote: Little Billy is going to get one of these footbags for Christmas and start kicking it. He's going to get interested in what footbag is, since he's never heard of it before, and then he's going to get on google, type in "footbag" and find footbag.org like most of us here probably did.

Having seen the Duncan yo-yo CD before, I can almost bet that there will be a link straight to footbag.org on the CD.

SandWraith · Post by **SandWraith** » 23 Dec 2005 14:09

^^^ AWESOME.

Peronsally, this seems like a good idea. Sure, it doesn't present footbag in all its glory, but I think if you show people flipping out with a bag, doing 3 dex moves and whatnot, you're gonna turn people off from the sport. Like was said before, if it's presented somewhat as a game, something to have fun with, people are gonna be more likely to enjoy it.

EDIT: \/ \/ \/ EVEN MORE AWESOME!

unkle steve · Post by **unkle steve** » 24 Dec 2005 14:41

My name is Steve Brown, and I’m the Marketing/Brand/New Product Coordinator for the Duncan Toys Company. Yes, we have begun production on a line of introductory footbags. No, we are not just another giant company looking to muscle in on your sport, make a quick buck, and leave everyone thinking that all footbag players wear neon spandex and perform “gnarly tricks” and “extreme moves”. I can assure you, there is nothing that we despise more than something genuine and cool being co-opted by a bunch of chunderheads in suits who don’t know what they are talking about, nor do they care. We’ve fought this, tooth and nail, in the yo-yo industry for many years now and we have no intentions of being “that company” in the footbag industry.

Duncan Toys has been in business for 76 years. We are the top sponsor for all major yo-yo events in the world (as well as many of the smaller ones), and we take our position quite seriously with regards to supporting the communities that we are producing products for. We recently introduced a line of basic juggling products, and already sponsor the World Juggling Federation championships and are working with them to build school programs to teach high-school age kids how to juggle. We are not a fly-by-night company, and we are not here to dumb anything down.

We are certainly new to this industry, and I’m positive that we are going to make some mistakes. There is a lot to learn, and as many of you who have been here for years can attest, it takes a while to really understand and appreciate the complexity of something like footbags. We have “paid our dues” in the yo-yo industry, and are a well-respected company. We do not expect this to carry over into footbags without proving ourselves, but we would certainly appreciate both your patience and your help in doing things right, and doing them well.

A few of you have located our press release for the footbag line, and used that to form your opinion about our motives. Press releases are written for the general public, and for store buyers. To bombard them with information is to guarantee that they don’t bother reading the release. Press releases are written for people who know nothing about the product, and their chief function is to get press and store placement for the product. The wording of press releases is, almost as a rule, incredibly cheesy and lame. We can’t help that, I’m afraid. If any of you have ever had a meeting with a corporate store buyer, you will certainly understand the battle of trying to explain “quality” to them.

A few people have passed judgement on our bags based on the pictures I posted on our MySpace page. I would hope that you would at least give them a try and form your opinion on them at that point, keeping in mind that these are introductory level bags. Their goal is to be good enough to provide some level of success for beginners, enough to gain and keep their interest. In the process of researching what footbags are currently available in the average store, we've seen some hellaciously crappy footbags. While ours may not be what the top players would use, I think everyone can agree they are far better than 99% of the brightly-colored cartoon-character-headed crap you see floating around in mass-market toy stores. My stepson came home last week with a "footbag" that he won at Chuck E. Cheese. It was perfectly round, stuffed to the gills, and hard as a rock. I wept. You won't see that from us, I promise.

We fully understand that our first three bags are not going to be to the liking of many advanced and pro-level players. We expect that the most seasoned players are going to regard them as an amusing novelty, but we hope that people can agree that these are a great bag for beginners, and far better than those horrific, crocheted, Jamaican-flag-colored garbage that everyone sees all the time. Our goal was to produce three footbags that would allow a new player to get started easily and have a place to move up. By that time they should have learned enough to find message boards like this, as well as tried more advanced bags and developed a preference for a more pro-level bag. By including the CD-ROM with all of our footbags, we aim to produce new players who are more educated about the sport, and with the new Duncan website we are building, there will be room for footbag players to discuss technique, events, as well links to more advanced sites and discussion forums (such as this one) in order to push them to the next level of play.

We would like, in the future, to produce at least one top-level, serious footbag. We are not to that stage yet, so please bear with us.

I hope that everyone can be forgiving of us while we continue learning about footbags, players, competitions, and the industry in general. We intend to keep footbags in our product line indefinitely and will be making steps with each production run to continue improving our designs and quality. We welcome any and all input, and our contact information is at the bottom of this post. Please feel free to use it.

In the meantime…well, I guess “Hey, how ya doin’?” We really do look forward to becoming a valuable and productive member of the footbag industry, and we greatly appreciate everyone’s patience and help as we learn our way around. I’m going to try and keep an eye on this board and a few others, but I already have 6 yo-yo message boards to keep tabs on, plus one board for guitars and one for zombie movies (my other two hobbies). So I may be slow in responding sometimes, but please feel free to e-mail Mike or myself. Mike has actually read through this letter and stuff, so really it’s from the both of us. But I write better in the first person. Sorry Mike.

Best,

Steve Brown
Marketing/Brand/New Product Coordinator
Duncan Toys Co.
[email protected]

Mike Burke
Nationals Sales & Marketing Manager
Duncan Toys Co.
[email protected]

sampotter · Post by **sampotter** » 24 Dec 2005 14:49

This is what I like to hear!

Thanks for the information, Steve. Looking forward to seeing how this unfolds in the future.

slapdash21 · Post by **slapdash21** » 24 Dec 2005 14:54

i know steve brown is MY hero!
but seriously...im no product-placement public relations expert, but this all sounds really solid to me, exactly the type of dedicated involvment this sport has been thirsting for, with a genuine interest and appreciation of the true multi-faceted aspects of the sport.
as a member of this communtiy, i thank you and your company and hope for a long term cooperative relationship

-p bowler

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 24 Dec 2005 15:06

Steven, that was a VERY encouraging and comforting post!

You seem really 'with it' and you know what our concerns are, thanks for not being like so many other clueless corporate types.

Great to hear from you!

Duncan Yo-Yo's to release Footbag products

Duncan yo-yo's