Yoyodyne is a fictional company featured in Thomas Pynchon's novels, most prominently in The Crying of Lot 49, and humorously referenced in various other media.
[3][1] Ralph Clare notes that Yoyodyne is typical of companies depicted by Pynchon that "appear rather banal, represented not primarily by management and corporate hatchet men but by frustrated salaried employees in their natural cubicle-habitat".
[4] Demonstrating how Pynchon uses Yoyodyne as an example of stifling innovation, Cyrus Patell writes: "The corporations that employ these inventors stress the value of 'team-work,' but for [Stanley] Koteks 'teamwork' is nothing but 'a way to avoid responsibility ... a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society'"[5] He also notes, "Yoyodyne follows the prototypical evolutionary pattern of a business within a culture of corporate capitalism: begun by an individual entrepreneur, it soon grows into a large entrenched bureaucracy that is hostile to individual initiative and inventiveness".
[5] Slade explains that the company is an example of a contradiction in values Pynchon presents in The Crying of Lot 49: "Yoyodyne ... manufactures destructive high-tech weapons but markets them in classical capitalist fashion, as if they were ordinary industrial products".
[13] A company named Yoyodyne LLC, based in Morristown, New Jersey, is a retailer of aftermarket motorcycle parts, including self-branded clutch accessories.