Streamer Poi

Properties
Visual Effect
Connection
Tangling

These are the poi you'll most likely find in a toy store. They're often brightly colored, with one or more tails of varying length. The handle is usually nylon, as is the cord, and you may or may not find swivels with the different versions. The end weight is usually a bead-filled pouch.

Properties

Some special qualities of streamer poi:

Visually more interesting than other poi
Tails help you see the circles and crossing points
Slowed rotation, due to the aerodymanics of the streamers
Soft bean bag weight less painful in collisions
Handles for easy gripping

Some drawbacks to their use:

The tails tangle!
The strings tangle!
Wind blows the tails off course
The tails also tend to hit the ground and fray/collect dirt
Not as suitable for buzzsaws, throws, or even stalls

Visual Effect

Streamer poi perhaps stand alone as the most visual of the daytime poi set. While striped socks may look somewhat mesmerizing, the long, neon tails of some streamer poi look almost like fire in the sunlight. They're an incredible lure for kids at festivals.

The streamers do more than add visual appeal from an outside perspective, however. They also help the spinner more clearly see their circles. Spin sideways to a reflective surface--a mirror or window--and you'll see just how flat or lopsided your planes really are. Additionally, the streamers make it a little easier to see the crossing point of your patterns. When you perform a weave, for example, do the streamers cross directly in front of you, or do they flail out to the sides? They're a good tool for practicing planes.

Connection

Since the streamers add air resistance to the rotation of the poi, they slow things down to some degree. This gives newer spinners slightly more time to work through patterns like the weave. It's also possible that the slower rotation may help with the timing of stalls, even though the stalls themselves don't look quite as nice as with other poi.

Tangling

Despite the visual appeal of streamer poi, I don't often use them anymore. I suppose I prefer usability over visual appeal; in fact, I think that higher usability eventually leads to a more complex and interesting set of movement possibilities. If there's any wind, streamers tend to snag during butterfly moves. They're also usually long enough that a buzzsaw sends them flapping at the spinner's face. If you mess up and tangle your poi, you'll have a lot more to untangle. After enough practice, one tends to tangle streamers quite a bit less, but there are still some points to consider in the usability department. Read on.

Move Limitations

Streamers may add an element of visual appeal to a move like the weave or even the corkscrew, but as you delve further into the realm of poi, you'll discover quite a few places where streamers just plain get in the way:

Throws don't rotate very nicely
Stalls disrupt the motion of the streamers
The streamers make stalls look less clean
Hyperloops are much more easily tangled
Buzzsaws hit your face unless the streamers are really short (then what's the point?)
Bounces work, but again the flow of the streamers is disrupted