Dave’s Cool Toys Blog

Kenny "K-Strass" Strasser

A very strange man has been appearing on morning TV shows throughout the midwest. He is booked as a yo-yo champion and hosts expect to be dazzled by his yo-yo tricks. He claims to be a representative of the Zim Zam Yo-Yo Corp., "the only non-profit, environmentally conscious yo-yo manufacturer in the world". Although some videos say "Zip Zap".

But when he gets on-air it turns out he is painfully inept at the yo-yo, strangely dressed, and awkward in general.

His name is K-Strass, or Kenny Strasser, or Karl Strassburg, or probably something else, and he has duped at least six different TV stations into booking him on their morning shows.

K-Strass sometimes claims to be divorced (twice), a recovering addict, and has family issues, sometimes taking calls from his father in the middle of his segment. His yo-yo "tricks" are often little more than swinging yo-yos around, dropping them, and sometimes hitting himself in the face or crotch. In one video he gets 7 yo-yos hopelessly tangled. He raps (badly), be-bops (badly), and falls down. He also seems to talk much more than play with the yo-yo.

Kenny also talks about going green, and Zim Zam is supposed to be environmentally friendly, however He seems to use plastic yo-yos, so I’m not sure how they are green.

So who is K-Strass? Nobody seems to know for sure. But there is a Zim Zam Yo-Yo website with nothing more than a yellow cap with the date "May 31". Hmmm. But there’s also another Zim Zam website as well. There is also a Zim Zam Facebook page. And, of course, there’s a Twitter feed, which clams that the www.zimzamyoyos.com page is a fake. Whew!

How bad is K-Strass? Check the videos below. Warning: some of K-Strass’s videos have been removed by their TV stations, so I can’t be sure how long these will be available.