Big, Brass Balls
This post started out when I checked out the new Odyssey catalog and noticed that they seem to have given up on metal pedals all together. This got me to thinking about how when I was a kid, getting rid of the cheap, plastic pedals that came with most completes was of high priority. Shimano DX pedals where a huge status symbol. If you were the man you’d convince your parents to upgrade your cranks to three piece ones at the same time (three piece cranks and one piece cranks used different spindle sizes. Of course, Stu Thomsen rode $12 one piece cranks and could beat everyone, so…). But these days kids throw away perfectly good metal pedals to replace them with plastic ones and higher end completes come with plastic pedals.
Then I started thinking about how many parts on a modern BMX bike are disposable. I mean, I’m not just talking about plastic pedals and plastic pegs but also any peg labeled “park only/light street.” All of the plastic one piece seat/post combos, super thin grips and constant forays into plastic bottom brackets. Not to mention that there seems to be a race on to see how much material can be removed from every metal part of a bike until someone actually dies from product failure.
Somehow or other we’ve gotten to a point in BMX where marketers have turned weakness into strength, “Plegs are cheap and easy to replace!” Yeah, but a couple of weeks ago I was talking to Dave at the skatepark (and I don’t know Dave’s last name, he’s just Dave, there’s also Mrs. Dave and Baby Dave) and he was talking about how he’s had the same set of Kink OG pegs for either five or nine years and he’s almost ground through them, finally. I’m not against plastic pegs (I actually run two sets of Dumbchucks, I do like that they’re less destructive, although I have to call “marketing hyperbole” on George French’s original claims that plegs do no harm to the environment) but I just think it’s crazy that kids will now replace the cheap Wellgo pedals that came on their bikes – that will likely outlast their frames – for equally cheap plastic pedals that will likely need to be replaced due to general riding.
Say what you will, the BMX industry has giant balls for pulling this one off. But not as big a set as the good folks of Sears, Roebuck & Co.
Anyone who knows me knows about this
View from my deck 8:31 am 09/21/2009
I’d gone to let the dogs out an hour earlier and water had actually gotten up to the top step. At this point the water started to recede and by 1:00 it was all gone. By 7:00PM the water was back up to the top step again. We had experienced a “500 year flood” two times in one day. In the shed were, among other things, my paint gun, some two stage auto paints, my table saw, my random orbital sander and my lawnmower. All but the paint gun were submerged, twice.
So, for the last couple of weeks we’ve been looking for a new lawnmower and we found that most Sears stores carry a collection of used mowers, some of which had what seemed to be really good prices. But you had to get them when they were “priced to sell.” Last week a salesman even straight up told us not to waste our time and come back this week. So, this week we came back and we saw a few used mowers that seemed to be good deals, but The Mrs. said “let’s go inside and see if these are actually good deals compared to new ones.”
No, they weren’t.
The Sears at Gwinnett Place Mall (and I don’t know if this is true for all of them) was selling used mowers for exactly the same price as new mowers.
We couldn’t believe this was true, so we went out and checked and, yup. So, a guy who answered the phone “manager on duty” while talking to us was like, “If it were me, I’d buy a new mower, the used ones are usually people who really don’t understand lawn mowers who bring them back and they may not have treated them the best.” But the price of a new one and the price of a used one are EXACTLY THE SAME, “Yeah, I can’t really change the price. I’d just buy a new one.” But, seriously, why would you price a used one the same as a new one? “Yeah, I’m not in control of that.”
Yeah, BMX industry, you may have perfected openly selling planned obsolescence to adolescents, but your cojones need to grow about 50 sizes to match this crap.
Also, don’t buy used lawn mowers from Sears.
In reality, the opposite of what you’re saying is true. The BMX industry didn’t spring plastic pedals on kids, the kids sprung the demand on the industry. I was just talking to Ben Hittle the other day and he mentioned how maybe 4 years ago he went to go buy a set of Ruben pedals for 100 dollars and they were out, when Spam reccomended he get plastic pedals for 13 dollars instead. He did, and rode them for 6 months without having to replace them. They are lighter, essentially as strong and totally fine for his type of riding. It took over a year after it became clear that plastic pedals were the future for all the companies to catch up (including Odyssey who couldn’t keep up with the demand for theirs). It’s pretty simple, I’m in the same situation, there’s simply no benefit to riding metal pedals aside from the fact that they will eventually wear down, but when on average it takes me 4-6 months to wear a set of PC’s down and they only cost 13-15 dollars each, that doesn’t even come into play.
To me BMX is often a chicken or egg scenario. It’s fairly easy to build hype in this industry, if you get a handful of hot riders to do something then a large number of the kids will try it at which point you can justify it by citing “demand.” But even if you take plastic pedals out of the equation there does seem to be a move to make more and more of the stuff you hang off your bike flimsier in the name of weight and then saying, “yeah, but it’s cheap and easy to replace.” I’d just rather buy it once and forget about it, y’know?
That being said, I do own a pair of clear Odyssey pedals. They’re on my old K2 that my wife rides. She likes the plastic pins ‘cos they are easier on her shins when she slips a pedal.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist and the bike industry isn’t nearly organized enough to pull this off, but I do find it really,really interesting that COMPLETE bikes have way, way less accessories on them than the ones that were sold 15 years ago, and the cost hasn’t changed that much. No pegs, no brakes, no gyro, cheap plastic pedals instead of metal ones….all that stuff costs money, maybe this is the industry’s way of dealing with a collapsing dollar or to get a better margin off of complete sales?
“Not to mention that there seems to be a race on to see how much material can be removed from every metal part of a bike until someone actually dies from product failure.”
I agree completely. Don’t get me wrong, my FBM flatland bike is a lot better to ride than my 38 pound Stout Boy back in 1998,
I think this lightweight trend is going to continue until the bikes and parts start failing for what they were made to do, and replacing parts becomes more of an inconvenience than a pleasure (you wouldn’t want to have a stem with LAST years limited edition colors, would you? It’s 2 oz heavier!) Just like it did in say….
1988.
When it was released, everyone liked the 1988 Haro Master because the vast majority of riders weren’t pushing the levels of riding high enough to break those frames. There were no skateparks, few ramps, and no one rode street.
A few years later people started riding street, ramp riding went exponentially bigger, flatland started getting much, much more difficult, and those bikes started snapping like twigs. This was at the same time we had a major recession.
So Add a financial recession (where kids/parents probably didn’t have as much disposable cash as they had previously), exponential BMX progression, and what do you get?
Kids getting tired of replacing parts every three months. Stems, headsets, tires, forks, bars, levers, calipers, everything! Suddenly having color coordinated parts seemed stupid, considering that no one could afford to replace everything every few months and you’d end up with a bike that looked like a skittles bag. Chrome, anyone? Right about that same time is when people started making bikes that might actually last more than a year or two. Trendy, cool looking and lightweight took a backseat to just having a bike that worked for what you wanted to do with it without having to spend more time working on your bike than riding it.
I think we’ll see this happen again, probably sooner than later.