Cereal Kendama Shapes (updated Nov 2023)

What's good fam!

As many of you know, shapes are a very big thing for Cereal Kendama and often one of the most talked about things in our community.

Since 2019, we've made it a goal to release a new shape every year on average. In this page, you can find a catalog of all the shapes we've released, a quick summary and link to read all about the shape.

Much love <3

Ascent 2 (2024)

Ascent was released in late 2022 as an upgrade to the Elevate shape, taking feedback from customers about which areas to improve upon while keeping within competition standard.

Little did we know that in KWC 2023, the 75mm sarado length limit was removed - with the only ken limit being the 170mm sword height. This opened doors for us to try new things with our "taller shape" with the "standard shape" being the Hybrid-2.

Ascent 2 comes with improving gunslingers through a small-cup sling support.  Slightly bigger cups to match the sarado and improve lunars. Upgraded ringstall to creates 4 touchpoints, making it easier to land ringstalls. And scaled up base cup and the base cup hole in order to ensure that the ken is (1) easy to hold (2) has great contact for lighthouses and (3) is not compromised on lunar play. Read all about the shape here.

Ascent (2023)

After taking a break to work on our standard sized shapes, we're back with a new taller shape - all ready for 2023.

Ascent merges the best of Performer and Elevate, while introducing new upgrades to improve play. Tweaks such as a thinner sarado, bigger cups and an all new balance hole result in improved gunslingers and lunars. All these changes were made possible through your feedback.

With this new shape, we are also launching Bevel Max - our new bevel that is the largest competition friendly size.

Ascent is a taller kendama (16.9cm tall) with a 75mm sarado, longer stall points and a strong lunar balance. Read all about the shape here.

Hybrid-2 (2022)

Hybrid-2 is our newest shape that combines the best of Performer and Elevate with some small upgrades. This was created after receiving feedback from our community on the little details that can be improved - especially when it came to stalls. It will be the flagship shape for Cereal Kendama in 2022 and you can expect to see it in a variety of woods, especially spliced ones.

Hybrid-2 is a standard sized kendama (16.4cm tall) with a 75mm sarado and insanely honed stall points. Read all about the shape here.

Elevate X (2021)

Elevate X is a fun, non-competitive kendama that makes it easy to show non-kendama players flowy string tricks. Taking inspiration from the Krom Viking and Analog Troll, the Elevate X is 10% larger than the Elevate, bringing it to a height of 18.7cm (not KWC legal) and tama size of 67mm. It is definitely a must have any dama player who loves to travel around and demonstrate the sport.

Fun fact: Elevate X was meant to be called Performer, however a delay in production and error in printing our dama bags resulted in the CREAL 2 upgrade being called Performer. Read all about the shape here.

Performer (2021)

Our Performer shape is our spiritual successor to the popular CREAL 1.5 shape. Sometimes we refer to it as CREAL 2. It is designed to be slightly slimmer but have a longer sarado for better slingers, wider base cup for better lighthouses and a deeper balance hole for better lunars - optimising the entire ken shape for a wide range of tricks. With that, it earned its moniker of the Performer, a kendama for all levels of play.

The Performer is a standard sized kendama (16.4cm tall) with a 73mm sarado and overall balanced shape dimensions. Read all about the shape here.

Elevate (2020) / Elevate'21 (2021)

Elevate was our bold step into pushing the boundaries of creating a maxed-out modern kendama. What this meant was a 17cm tall kendama, with a 75mm sarado, something not commonly done. Our first iteration of the Elevate was not perfect and within 6 months we had fixed the shape to the 2021 version, featuring a thicker sarado to improve lunar balance.

Elevate still runs strong today and should be a go-to shape for anyone wanting the maximum kendama height. Read all about the shape here.

CREAL 1.5 (2019)

Creating and launching CREAL 1.5 was a turning point for Cereal Kendama as it helped us achieve recognition around the world for producing a good shape that allowed players to land all sorts of tricks easily. It was a good shape for its time, but kendama is an evolving sport and we soon found it outdated against some of the newer shapes. Since then, we've retired the CREAL 1.5 in favour of the Performer shape.

We launched the last CREAL 1.5 on our 6 year anniversary mod. Read all about the shape here.

The Final Bevel (2020)

Yes, even a bevel deserves a name. After prototyping various bevel sizes for years, we finally landed on a ratio of outer to inner width that worked for our ken shapes. This has carried us all the way into 2022, although we are looking at a way to design a bevel more optimised for Hybrid-2 and our 2023 shape.

Read all about The Final Bevel here.