Anyone know what’s up with the Sweets Homegrowns? Discontinued temporarily because of covid? I noticed that the homegrown section on the sweets site is gone...
Pretty sure the Homegrown brand is gone, at least for the time being. Even the Homegrown Team isn't listed separately anymore. I don't think COVID had anything to do with it though. I can't remember their last release but it's been a while.
Matt Sweets himself categorically said on stream that they would no longer make Homegrowns. This was around the time they revealed the Sweets Splices. It's a shame too, never got to own one.
Last HG I’m aware of were the Mugen collabs, but HGs were all prime not boosted. I know the shape aspect is not as important everywhere, but in the US, interest in smaller sized kens has nearly vanished.
IIRC The first (OG) HGs were F3 shaped and the Next Gen were Prime shaped. Also the Prime shape is still semi current and seen in the Target Sweets models.
The ebb and flow of what is “hyped” in the kendama world is so crazy. It changes so quickly. Just sticking around for a couple years is long enough to see evolution of shapes, play styles, and mainstream tricks. A lot of the same tricks get “invented” or more so rediscovered after a couple years. I’ve learned that first hand when I used to think I was making up new tricks, but then someone would tag me in a 5 year old post with an unknown OG banging out the same trick. You learn that kendama isn’t about ownership of ticks/styles, but more about sharing, community, building from each other, performance art, etc. We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants.
Getting all Zen on us. (blasted photo posting) (At least you can click on this one to see it) cat guru 2
The second little broken picture icon is the link but here it is in text: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51121855585_00b8e6ced8_o.gif Nothing earth shattering but thought of it after your post.
True that! Thankfully in Europe, it's not exactly the case. Some companies like DA\O are keeping standard cups alive.
You can still find them on the secondary market. Quite often they are NIB so it's just like the 'old days'