Fruitloop ES

The Fruitloop ES is an evolution of the concept first pioneered in the original Fruitloop, released in 2022.

We tore the original design down and built it back from scratch, with adjustments and fixes based on four years of player feedback. It’s more powerful, stable, and has a lot more presence and substance in play. The Fruitloop ES might look visually identical to the original, but it packs an entirely new engine underneath.

At it’s heart, the Fruitloop ES is a round, boppy ball of fun — but now tuned for a higher threshold of play demands.

SPECS
Diameter 53.7mm
Width 45.1mm
Weight 67.0g
Material 6061 AL

The Fruitloop was released in 2022 and was one of our most inspired concepts of the year. Capped designs had long existed before it, but we were excited to pioneer a playful, open-bodied, “donut-hole” organic that looked and played like its namesake. The Doorknob by A-RT and SF was particularly inspiring in this project — we can’t count the number of hours of our lives we’ve spent in awe watching Enter the Nugg Zone by Tyler Vieanneau and the way he makes a small, round, impractically imperial-shaped yoyo move with flow, elegance and technical precision.

If you haven’t watched this yet, we strongly recommend doing that before going about your lives.

After the Fruitloop’s full release, the reception we received after was decidedly split — in a way that feels similar to how certain vintage film lenses are discussed. For instance, the Helios 44 is an iconic, well-known Soviet-era lens that cinematographers adapt today for their characteristic look — swirly bokeh, soft focus, unpredictable flares, and dreamy halations. The Helios was used on the Dune: Part Two and The Batman films for those exact reasons — a characterful visual signature, despite more “objective” visual imperfections. It’s not a lens you’d use if you needed a perfectly sharp, defined, and corrected image — you’d use it for visual character, or the feel that is just absent in more sterile, optically perfect alternatives. You’d use it for shots like these.

The discourse surrounding the Fruitloop at the time felt similarly divided into two camps. We had a whole host of player feedback telling us the Fruitloop was full of unique character and “soul”, that additional extra something that could be felt and experienced in play — a distinct feeling as it moved through mounts and string redirects. Some others felt it lacked power, stability, and presence.

The first type of feedback told us we were doing something right in the creative, experimental, and experiential department; the latter type reminded us the concept still had room for improvement and refinement. Holding both in tension kept us honest about the original Fruitloop and where it stood.

It took us four years to eventually return to the Fruitloop concept. We knew that if we ever were to release an update, it had to retain all of the soul and character of the original, and at the same time fix any issues that were present. In other words, develop a Fruitloop that was boppy, rolling and quick — a signature playfeel that we nailed the first time around — and yet have it still be stable, and have more presence and power.

For a design like the Fruitloop, it was not immediately obvious that striking that balance was possible.

Achieving this required that we tear down the original to its studs, and to look for answers in very different places. The usual key area of adjustment when you want to tweak power and stability is rim weight — but the complexity of the cap design made it such that we had other variables to consider and experiment with.

This kicked off a long and intense process that involved weeks of going back and forth with our machining team, who communicated with us live from the factory floor. Frankly, this might have been the hardest design we’ve ever worked to perfect. We prototyped the new concept five times, iterating across cap thickness and weight, varying circumferences of the “donut hole”, even exploring and eliminating aerodynamic causes for vibration.

We ran one prototype that felt perfect in terms of weight distribution and feel but vibrated badly because of the way air was entering and leaving the “donut hole”. We’ve never had to consider airflow as part of the math, but hey — that’s now a feather in our cap.

Having these five prototypes to run comparison tests with makes it clear how playfeel is entirely defined by fractions of millimeters and grams.

A massive shoutout is due to the machinists in our industry. They’re rarely the focus of our field, but we’re very grateful for the technical excellence, material science knowledge and work ethic that we’ve come across in our experiences. With every project that passes, we get to learn so much from them.

The outcome of such an arduous prototyping process was a Fruitloop prototype that fit the bill — a version that felt every single bit of the boppy, rolling, rhythmic playfeel that we loved, but now more sure, solid, and stable. In play, it just feels full.

It’s not going too far to say that prototyping might be one of our favourite parts of the entire Atmos process. Going from inspiration and design theory to having an entirely original object in your hand that hadn’t existed in the world before — that’s an experience that never gets old.

At the close of the original’s design journal, we wrote,

“The Fruitloop is not made for tech (although Evgeniy still finds a way to do elegantly complex things with it). It’s certainly not the yoyo to pick up if you’re into speed play or the latest competition meta. It’s actually even structurally biased against finger spins and DNA binds, and it won’t break any long sleeper world records. If you’re looking for a powerful performance beast, we genuinely recommend you to set your sights on other industry offerings.

However, if you’re like us – in need of something a bit different – perhaps in the search of a fun, boppy and rhythmic throw that will bring on hours of jamming fun, something unique to freshen your rotation, or something playful that might inspire the next shoot-the-moon-behind-the-neck-regen banger that will set the collective interwebs on fire, the Fruitloop might just be for you.”

The Fruitloop ES brings with it crucial bug fixes, quality of life upgrades, and a brand new engine underneath, but it remains unchanged at heart — it’s made for a dang good time.

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The fruitloop es is equipped with

Stratos Pads by Atmos

Type Ii Concave Bearings by Atmos

CloudWeave micro by Atmos

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july 2026

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