piddles.net blog

In its prime, hoops&yoyo were relatively popular, not a household name, but something that had enough staying power to land itself on store shelves worldwide. The dynamic that the characters had was something really fresh and unique, and that stuck with a lot of people.

Of course, with anything that is popular, there will be something that tries to imitate what made it successful. hoops&yoyo was subject to such, as people attempted to create bootleg mugs, notebooks, and an entire theme park using their characters. However, more creative individuals over the years have attempted to make their own characters that are simply in the vein of hoops&yoyo, still evoking the general idea of what makes a hoops&yoyo eCard fun to watch and send, with their own voice and vision.

Continue reading →

During 2013 to 2015, Hallmark.com slowly began to phase out Flash-based content on their website, primarily the eCards that ran on it. hoops&yoyo heavily relied on the software, as it is what allowed it to be interactive. Letting people play with the homepages, eCards, and “funimations” all had played a large factor into what made it stand out and kept users on the website.

In 2015, hoops&yoyo stopped production after a series of mass lay offs at the company during the summer of that year. In these lay offs was the original series creator Bob Holt, who was told that hoops&yoyo did not fit into the “humor” that Hallmark wanted. During this time, a lot of other animation-focused projects were cut or ceased production, and the focus was no longer on eCards. All future hoops&yoyo merchandise was made reusing/editing renders or prints already produced, and was limited to print only cards.

Continue reading →