Two things I’d never want: a Huffy or a Stalker
by Ted JohnsonI saw this bike outside of a Supercuts yesterday. A Huffy Stalker.
Is there a creepier model name for any mass-produced bike? I’ve spent half an hour Googling this, and I can’t find anyone else who found this bike’s name a little disturbing.
What were they thinking?
Perhaps other bloggers are smart enough not to want their websites search-indexed for the words “stalker” and “creepy.” (Great. That ought to bring in the the kind of traffic we want.)
Over the weekend, I’ve been thinking about iconic brands. (For reasons to be revealed in a forthcoming bike review.)
I’m no bike snob. (I think the Web already has one of those.) But isn’t Huffy the iconic bad bike?
Yet the brand has survived this long-standing stigma, as well as being driven into bankruptcy with help from Wal-Mart.
Even Blackwater changed it’s name to Xe, after it’s original name became synonymous with “private mercenary army” and “human rights abuses.” (Okay, maybe Huffy’s brand-name problems aren’t that bad.)
Huffy’s response seems to be: Fight for survival and keep on making bikes. And they double down with disturbing bike names.
The Freddie Krueger of bike brands.
In a way, you’ve got to admire that.
Huffy is definitely a strange bird. Synonymous with consistently poor quality, yet also consistently made in USA for decades. don’t know if they still are…
Nope. After the Wal-Mart problems, they were rescued by their Chinese suppliers and a firm linked to the Chinese government.
I dunno, Ted.
I find the Cannondale Perp, the GT Psyclone and the Pinarello Dogma just as disturbing!
Awesome. Where’s the “like” button when you want it?
“Perhaps other bloggers are smart enough not to want their websites search-indexed for the words “stalker” and “creepy.”
FWIW, Google Trends says stalker has about 4x more search activity than creepy and that most of it comes (interestingly enough) from Russia.
That’s not as creepy as it might sound,though: Apparently, “stalker” is Russian slang for urban scavengers. It’s also the name of a Russian FPS game that takes place in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl.
Anyone else who cares enough about bike to blog about them quit reading after the word “huffy” and thus never discovered the model name.
If your memory goes back 50 – 60 years, Horace M. Huffman’s HUFFMAN MANUFACTURING, CO. was an icon of the better sort. Standing beside companies like Mercury, Rollfast, Columbia and Schwinn. They’ve definately chosen a differnt path; Schwinn (in name) is their only peer still in business.
Yeah there’s a lot of history behind the Huffy name but sadly its just another cheap Chinese import today.
Aren’t they just stickers? Didn’t Greg Lemond ride a Huffy in the Tour?
Didn’t Greg Lemond ride a Huffy in the Tour?
I don’t know about on The Tour, but on a poster, apparently:
http://forums.bicycling.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/692104717/m/3741009626