The back cover of the latest Bicycle Retailer magazine had a Torker ad that made me sad. Torker was once one of the coolest brands on the BMX circuit with riders such as the King brothers and Jason Jensen and later powerhouse Tommy Brackens and Hollywood Mike Miranda.
The twin top tube actually made it a favorite among freestyle riders and Bob Haro based his first freestyle bike on Torker's design. What made me cringe is the fact that the Torker name is now being used to sell Unistar Unicycles, Scooters, Beach Cruisers and Trikes with not one BMX bike in their program. What happened here? GT Bicycles isn't coming away freely either as they've put their logo on strange products such as strollers, skateboards and electric scooters to sell, sell, sell!
When the Taiwanese FUJI company bought the SE Racing brand, the cult BMX-ers started sweating. All their hope is now in Todd Lyons' hands. TL is the SE brand manager and will have a hard time convincing the bosses not to do strange things with the SE name.
Is it really necessary to use BMX brand names to sell all this crap? Torker might just as well have used the "Tokkie" name, GT could have put something like "GP" on their toys and hopefully TL doesn't have to come up with a name for non-BMX related products that the FUJI management has in mind.
Let's keep it separated; BMX=BMX and toys are toys. To some people a BMX bike is a toy but for most of us it's way more than that.
BdJ
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After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.