Shoutbox

[kobeshane]

I think we really NEED to get Active People`s head out of the gutter and tell them to start promoting jax! I mean what they expect us to promote emthey need to get these things back to target and Walmart(though I HATE HATE HATE walmart and cant go there.We need to tell them that people are still interested in simple fun toys.I mean w egotta bring some Activity to The People that could be our "slogan" but seriousley kids are all razzle dazzle in these ipod touch`s (which I confess are cool) But not as great as it feels to pick up a set of jax and just free form its whatever you want we gotta have a bigger company than DUNCAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I saw a kittle Duncan demo at toys R us with some good old kids and stickers and yoyo s to mess around with we gotta all send some strong eMails to Active people and get them to push to get some jax in stores.We gotta get these out I mean everywher has to at least know what these are look In my point of view to do tricks on a yo-yo is way harder than do jax.and kids like simple things but for the one`s that like complicated stuff BAM harder tricks.I SAY THAT WE ALL SEND SOME STRONG EMAILS TO ACTIVE PEOPLE!!!WHOS WITH ME :

[Theferrell]

Well, honestly, Duncan has been around for ages.... and their stuff is extremely cheap and people will buy a crappy yoyo anytime. (honestly, I'm not a fan of Duncan. Anybody who loves FHZ's are loooooooooooooooooosers haha)

So yea, I'm game. But, I don't think we should go with the angry mob tactic. Only worked with revolutions, not promoting

Larry, what would we as players need to do to get AP to listen to us??

[Larry Shaw]

Well, www.astrojax.com has been up and down for an awfully long time. During the periods of it being up again I could have posted new things there so it wouldn't look abandoned, but I didn't since I knew it would be going down again. There is a major revamping of the site going on, so you have to keep that in mind. Honestly, I do feel that the revamping would have been accomplished much quicker if it had been done in the US rather than Switzerland ... I suspect that the level of competency here, especially in Silicon Valley, is considerably greater for Internet technology than in Switzerland. But whatever, Active People chose to have someone local do the new website since they want to have ease of communications about the content and having someone local who speaks Swiss-German doing the new website was preferable. One thing this community should understand however is that the time scale for businesses is considerably different than most personal time scales. What seems slow for you personally may not be quite that slow for a business. I can assure you that Active People is committed to Astrojax. (By the way, the new website should be up soon.)

As for having marketing materials that feature the old players rather than the new players ... I understand your consternation regarding that. However, you have to understand that the marketing materials are only meant to be targeted to people's first exposure to Astrojax, not people deep in the culture. From Active People's perspective (and I understand this perspective), these marketing materials just need to show some of what Astrojax can do and people having fun with Astrojax. However, what these old marketing materials fail to show is very important ... that Astrojax is more than a toy, it is a culture (a deep and varied, very artistic and creative, culture at that), and the culture has come a very long way from when those marketing materials were made. I agree that the marketing materials fail to communicate the depth and variety of the culture and that is a challenge I have discussed at length with Active People.

Regarding lobbying Active People with emails, you can do that if you like. However, I'm in touch with Rene and Alex and it's something I have been and will be discussing with them. But it is wonderful to have a community that understands and cares about Astrojax so much, and understands Astrojax's potential. Someday you all will be able to look back on these posts and say "I told you so."

[Theferrell]

Consternation???? Wow, that's a big word....

Ok, good. I'm satisfied. I just wanted some assurance that there is stuff being done. I'm patient, just not a fan of people sitting on their keysters

[kobeshane]

yeah i AGREE With ferrel and i would just like to know that stuff is gettin done I mean It`s just odd to me that they wouldnt like to get their site up so quick.And I f we could somehow photoshop all of us in aj shirts that would be awesome for the site I just think we should have some new jaxers on the site!

[ajcol]

Kobeshane: In the past I've asked players to submit photos of themselves with Astrojax. I can count the submissions I've gotten over the years on one hand. Actually, I think I only remember one reply just recently from Claudia! That's it.

When the time is right I will make yet another request. I've got too much on my plate at the moment. Maybe with a little luck, someone with talent and initiative will take on the project. I'd love to have some great photos to draw from for USAstrojax.com.

[seamore]

so pretty much, just someone who's willing to put together a usastrojax team or something? i'm not exactly sure what we're all going for here... i'm all for it, and i'm up for the whole promoting/marketing thing, but part of me thinks that we all just want to get famous and immortalized in the community. sounds kinda greedy to me. but yes, it would be cool to have a usa team, that everyone can kinda form around, but i think it's up to jim larry and whoever else to decide things like who's in it... but it would be a good idea to have a team similar to the swiss/worldwide team, but on a smaller, more USA oriented scale, that would still appeal to various groups of people. we do pretty much have this though, they're all here in our small commmunity!


i can't wait to see the new website an things going again; but we can still move the community and promote aj's! do pretty much what we've been doing lately: get aj's in the media and things, promotions, all that good stuff.
anyways, just some of my thoughts. thought i'd post here for old-time's sake

[Larry Shaw]

I'm not exactly sure what Jim has in mind. He does want to have some content on USAstrojax.com that's not found elsewhere (besides the entire Astrojax line for sale, which is fantastic in and of itself!).

seamore, I wouldn't worry about people's motivations ... everybody who's been frequenting allesastrojax.com and freedo.info came because of a love of Astrojax. This is a remarkable period in the culture, it is not often that a new toy/sport comes along and a culture grows so quickly. Any fame that ensues is a nice fringe benefit.

And yes, the new site will be up relatively soon and what the community has been doing all along needs to be continued.

Happy Orbiting!