LESULA
We just F**ked UP!!!
The Lesula: The Mistake That Made Us
We were flying high. The Gelada crushed everything the Evil-Yo did before it. Sales were booming, the hype was real, and we felt like MonkeyfingeR was on fire.
So we thought, why not circle back to that unhinged original design and crank the insanity to eleven?
No half measures, just full-send madness.
Ray had this wild idea: what if we took the giant catch zone from the Evil-Yo and shoved it all the way to the edges? Add some smart weight distribution, tighten the center of mass… boom, the ultimate learner’s throw. Basically impossible to miss a string with it.
No, seriously. You can’t miss. This was going to be the beginner’s yoyo. Big catch zone, easy to land, and built like a tank. We were so confident, we skipped prototyping altogether. Just drew it up and sent it off.
Picked up the run at a shop in Calgary. Cracked open the box, buzzing with excitement…
And then Ray’s face drops.
I mutter:
“We F**CKED UP.”**
We didn’t make a yoyo.
We made a medieval weapon.
Heavy. Sharp. Dangerous.
One bad bind and someone’s catching a trip to the ER.
I just stood there staring, already feeling the whole company slipping through my fingers. No sales = no cash = game over. When you’re bootstrapping from the ground up, every cent is already spent on the next run. There was no backup plan. No cushion.
Todd shows up at the lab, takes one look, and his face says it all. For 45 minutes we sit there, silent, stunned, staring at a box of what could be the end of MonkeyfingeR.
And then it clicks.
We look at each other, and without saying a word, we know.
This isn’t the end, it’s the start of something new.
We shove the box aside, grab some paper, and start scheming. If we were going to survive, we needed to flip the whole game. We couldn’t just compete with other brands, we had to become something unmistakable.
This isn’t the end, it’s the start of something new
From day one, we were always about giving more. When other brands tossed in one sticker, we threw in three, a custom bag, and info cards. But now? Now we needed to go next level.
First thing to go? The boring brown square box.
The Lesula would come in a custom printed triangle display box that screamed “Yeah, we’re different.”
Next? Anodizing. The old stuff wasn’t going to cut it. We pushed every technique we’d learned in the lab to the edge, and then some.
This was a major turning point. A full-blown evolution.
The throw?
We named it the Lesula, and it dropped in three wild flavors:
Lemon-Merrangled
Rotten-Apple
Blueberry-Klobber
The Lesula turned out to be a polarizing beast. Some loved it. Some didn’t get it. But the real ones, the ones who took a chance, got a piece of MonkeyfingeR history.
Because this wasn’t just a throw.
It was a statement.
The Lesula was a mistake, but it was our mistake.
And it’s what pushed MonkeyfingeR to stop following the rules.
No boundaries.
No limits.
Just pure, unapologetic expression.