Ok, ever since the press release the shit has been flying about Tony Hawk bikes and how they were forged in the deepest pits of the 9th circle of the 13th level of Hell by The Antichrist hisownbadself to reign down death and destruction on the BMX industry. Ohhh the blogs were alive with the sound of hatred and the teeth where gnashed and the insults were slung and it was all pretty ugly.
Let’s review:
Dynacraft - a company who’s portfolio includes such staples of the hardcore BMX experience as Magna, Vertical and Next - licensed the Tony Hawk Boom Boom Huck Jam name to put on two lines of low end bicycles. The Huck Jam series which will be sold at xMart type stores (you know Wal-Mart, Tarzhay, K-Mart, Toys R Us) while the Huck Jam Signature line will be slightly more upscale and sold at your Sports Authorities, REIs and Dick’s of the world. Got that, good, because this is where the proverbial caca hit the proverbial bladed wind moving device.
The entirety of the BMX industry collectively shat its pants. No, seriously, everyone came out screaming about how Tony Hawk hates bikes and is against bikes in skateparks (which is funny, and illogical when you think about it. I’ll give you a minute to sit and reflect about all of the Tony Hawk branded media like video games and videos and compare it to other similarly skate focused media……………….This is where it dawns on you, “hey, Tony’s stuff has a lot of bikes in it!” Yes, yes it does). Then there was the Tony’s cashing in on BMX and the Tony’s taking money away from the BMX industry and…
I’ve already gone over this before, really.
As if often the case in this kind of thing there are multiple arguments that are getting mashed into one big bout of grown assed men acting like little kids. Let’s break them down.
1. Tony Hawk is whoring out his name for a fast buck. This may or may not be true, he’s certainly going to be well compensated for this, but dude’s gotta make alimony and child support payments somehow. I think bringing in Rooftop to oversee the BMX portion of the operation was a good move, tho.
2. These bikes are going to steal money away from real BMX companies. Really now? REALLY? I want you to get into your car and drive to Wal-Mart, go to the bike section and tell me what you see. No, don’t, I’ll tell you what you see you see bikes from Schwinn, Mongoose, Vertical, Next, Magna and Huffy.
Huffy abandoned the high-end BMX market, what, four years ago? Cory Nastazio actually stayed under contract to Huffy after they stopped producing the bike he was (supposedly) riding. Now, to be fair to Huffy they would often blow out the previous year’s mid-level bikes at mass market retailers (I actually snagged an old Huffy Half-Ton from Toys R Us back in ‘98, it was the only bike I could ever manual. I also saw one of the original tri-moly framed Nasty M-80s at Wal-Mart once) but that was years ago.
Mongoose also will occasionally sell last year’s mid-level bikes at mass market retailers. Back in the day I saw them getting rid of the original tri-moly frame Importans (remember those? It was the Reuben Alcantara signature model, but he never actually rode it, he rode a T-1 with Mongoose stickers. He quit Mongoose after like 6 months to join MacNeil and Mongoose retaliated by actually making the Importan a bike that a pro level rider might actually ride) and mid-level Fuzzes at Toys R Us. But that was a long time ago.
As far as I can tell, Schwinn has officially dropped out of the high end market after dropping the Lavin 500/1000.
Basically xMart sales are dominated by Pacific and Dynacraft bikes, anyway. On this front the only people Dynacraft are really leaching sales from is, well, themselves.
At the sporting good level it gets a little trickier. I mean at this level you might actually find pro level bikes from companies like GT, Mongoose, Diamondback and Haro. You’ll find intro level bikes from those same companies as well. I could see a kid walking into a Sports Authority store and buying a Tony Hawk bike over a low end GT for the same price, but most of the people bitching and moaning wouldn’t buy the GT either. GT isn’t cool, you know, they’re a “corporate company” not a “rider owned company” (that always makes me laugh, because, you know, people don’t understand the definition of a corporation).
As far as I can tell the only rider owned company that really has a good shot at penetration of the sporting goods store level is MirraCo, but it’s so long since I’ve been into a Dick’s it’s hard to say. Either way, Tony Hawk bikes aren’t ever really fighting one on one against “core” BMX brands. They really aren’t. I don’t think any of the bike shop only companies makes bikes at that low a level.
3. The bikes are just lame, look at them. Good luck with that. Given the amount of bile and revulsions spewed by the community about these bikes I thought I’d find gajillions of pictures of them being made fun of all over the web. Not the case. Going to google and entering “Tony Hawk bikes” “Boom Boom Huck Jam Bikes” “Boom Boom Huck Jame Signature Series Bikes” and “Tony Hawk Interbike” reveals a slew of pictureless press releases and more than a couple links back to stuff that I’ve written about the whole thing. If you finally do manage to pull a picture or two out of the whole mess (here’s one, here’s another, then a third, and a last one) the thing you will be struck by is how, well, ordinary they look.
Seriously, although I can’t say enough bad things about the colors they chose (metallic pimp gold? Really?) if you de-stickered them they’d look pretty much like every single other bike out there. No, seriously, look at that last picture again. How lame these bikes are, really, is a function of how they stack up to their direct competition.
Let’s go over to Target.com and check some stuff out.
Is it lamer than the Magna Freefall 20″ bike? Well, if it was 1998 it would be, but it’s not.
What about the Vertical Boost? Well, so far it seems to be doing better than the other Dynacraft bikes out there.
The Cadillac Escalade bike actually doesn’t look half bad, but I’d hate myself in the morning if I spent $300 to buy my kid a $99 bike just because it said “Escalade” on it. I do, however, still want an ‘08 CTS.
Enough about that, what about at a sporting goods store. Why the Mongoose Talon looks, well, it looks like one of those early Nirve models that Mike Laird rode back in 2000 or so. Which I guess is, really, better than how sister company Schwinn released a bike from 1997. Not how Covert Bikes released new bikes with 1997 type designs, but literally slapping TJ Lavin’s name on a 1997 - 2000 Schwinn Hydramatic frame (the ’01s had straight downtubes) and selling it at xMart stores.
The Mongoos Brawler, however, is a much more modern design, if you ignore the fact that that design is from two years ago (check the size of those dropouts.).
What I’m saying is that, well, judged against it’s competition the Tony Hawk Bike looks pretty good. How will the quality of the componetry be? I don’t know, my guess is it’ll have generic tektro brakes and Wellgo pedals an Oryg I think they have Kenda tires. Basically this bike probably will cost you less than buying all the parts to slap on a new frame.
I guess what I’m really saying is, “you were never going to buy one anyway, so stop talking shit.”
Also, “stop building track bikes, seriously, it’s dumb.”