Flowtoys Review

Having recently done a sponsorship deal with the Californian glow prop manufacturer, Flowtoys, me and Tim are now the proud owners of Flowtoys contact staffs, double staffs, juggling staffs and double ended poi.

Having owned and played with a number of different glow props from a variety of manufacturers what follows is my honest oppinion of the props after having played with them for a few months.

Flow toys props are all made from the same Flow Light design available in different elements - Air (white-blue-white), Water II (blue-white-aqua), Fire (orange-red-yellow) and Love (pink-white-pink).

For poi you can either just tie some cord to the flowlight or use the crystal case to hold them (i'd recomend this). The staffs are polycarbonate tubing of different lenthes which the flowlights fit inside. The tubing attaches together with connectors so you can vary the size of your staff. The flow lights are designed so you can attatch them together in a line to make them easier to get in and out and presumably to stop some of the rattle. You can also order a set of 'Flow mass' to add extra weight.

Overall i love them, they are much brighter than the concentrates i had before, also having individually programable units is nice. They are a little annoying to turn on when we do our contact routine as there are 10 units in each contact staff. Also they make a horrible rattling noise when you drop them which is disconcerting to begin with. Im very impressed with their durability though, they seem much stronger than i had originally thought when we first got them.

The joins on the contact staff need to be taped togther when we spin them because of the mass on the ends, this isnt that much of a problem as long as you remember to do it! EDIT - Flowtoys have now changed the design of the connectors so this is no longer an issue.

The weighting is pretty good, the mass makes the contact staffs about perfect weight, the doubles are fairly good but could do with slightly more end weighting, not as much as the mass adds but maybe making the ends slightly heavier. I didnt add the extention units they were sent with, as their legth was about right for me without them. The extra length would probably improve the weight distribution if i used it but on me they are too long for inside plane stuff with the extention. Not using the extention also means they are exactly the same as the juggling staffs which is nice. They seem to hold up to being dropped repeatedly very well, so far I havn't had any problems with them at all.

The grip tape is excellent for grip and looks really cool but not that durable, we have worn holes in both staffs that have it. This is something Flow Toys are aware of though and they say have better tape on the way. I havn't put grip on the doubles as i dont do much doubles contact so can get away with not using it. It also gets dirty very quickly with a lot of use, fortunatly you can clean it easily with a damp cloth.

The poi are awsome! it took me a while to get used to having such large straight ends but once id got used to it i found them to be very responsive poi. They are wibbleable too, sweet. I've found that putting the handle units on a fast strobe and the end units on something like bounce looks great. The only bad thing i have to say about the poi is that they really hurt when you hit yourself with them, as i do a lot of throws this happens a lot. The handle units swinging round and hitting you in the eye from over the shoulder throws is enough to stop your practice session.

Battery life seems pretty good. We always recharge them befor going off for a gig so they don't often get the chance to fully discharge but the occasions they have they seemed to last a good while. They also dont get dimmer when the battery is fading. This is a mixed blessing as you don't get any warning the battery is about to go but you do get nice bright props.

As i say, overall they are great and i have been recomending them to lots of people. They arnt aerotechs but for the money they are certainly worthwhile (and hopefully will last longer than aerotechs anyway). Link to Flow Toys Here