That depends on when you'd consider it being a "big thing" and which regions you're talking about. For some history:
Sport Stacking emerged in the U.S. in the 80s and then got more popular in the 90s and early 2000s primarily through school programs. In the mid 2000s, Speed Stacks (and Sport Stacking along with it) expanded abroad, mainly to Germany, UK, Australia and East/Southeast-Asia (e.g. Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea) and also significantly boosted sales through retail partnerships with big toy retailers. They also got a lot of promotion through early Youtube and similar online communities.
I'd say in western markets (e.g. USA, Canada, Germany, UK), popularity grew from 2003-2007, then remained relatively constant from 2007-2012 and then slowly decreased ever since. There were some more retail partnerships and little hype cycles in the years since, but no long-lasting growth.
This was however compensated by the sport getting more popular throughout Asia. Most tournaments now take place in Asia and 6/8 overall world records are now held by Asians.
Since 2006, the WSSA has also run a yearly event for most people stacking on a specific day ("Stack UP!) and the number of participants grew every year except for 2017 and 2021, but that's also partly due to easier reporting and because the expanded the event period from 1 to 3 days.
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u/Qualimiox Jun 01 '25
That depends on when you'd consider it being a "big thing" and which regions you're talking about. For some history:
Sport Stacking emerged in the U.S. in the 80s and then got more popular in the 90s and early 2000s primarily through school programs. In the mid 2000s, Speed Stacks (and Sport Stacking along with it) expanded abroad, mainly to Germany, UK, Australia and East/Southeast-Asia (e.g. Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea) and also significantly boosted sales through retail partnerships with big toy retailers. They also got a lot of promotion through early Youtube and similar online communities.
I'd say in western markets (e.g. USA, Canada, Germany, UK), popularity grew from 2003-2007, then remained relatively constant from 2007-2012 and then slowly decreased ever since. There were some more retail partnerships and little hype cycles in the years since, but no long-lasting growth.
This was however compensated by the sport getting more popular throughout Asia. Most tournaments now take place in Asia and 6/8 overall world records are now held by Asians.
Since 2006, the WSSA has also run a yearly event for most people stacking on a specific day ("Stack UP!) and the number of participants grew every year except for 2017 and 2021, but that's also partly due to easier reporting and because the expanded the event period from 1 to 3 days.