I remember my brother saved every penny and had to special order it through our local bicycle shop in Michigan and like everything back then wait until the first run was built and shipped
With all due respect to the Content creator here, Midlife BMX, the celebration of Kuwahara is understandable to those who understood BMX from the consumer's point of view but to those of us who were behind the scenes in the creators of the sport position and who were making a living from the manufacturing, the promotion and as the sponsors of racing teams, ET and Kuwahara were the death knell of American BMX at all levels. Back in the day there was little to no involvement from overseas manufacturing in the world of BMX. There was Tom Heininger, Dan Gurney, Skip Hess, Linn Kastin,Gary Turner, Bill Bastian, Scot Breithaupt and Gary&Craig Cook. These men dominated the aftermarket BMX racing frame and fork set manufacturing and sales across the Country. Respectively, these men were the founders of Webco, DG Racing, Mongoose, Redline, GT, Race Inc, SE Racing and Cook Bros. Racing and their products were the beginning, the be all, end all that was American BMX and they had no equal in the sport. Then came a fantasy film that caught the eye of every little kid around the world who fell in love with the idea of owning the bike that flies across the sky so they can take their alien on whatever adventures they could find. The children who got their parents to buy one had no aspirations to race bicycles, they wanted what was in the movie, a boy, his Reese's eating wart and the bicycle that thought it was a Cessna. Speilberg's product placement in the film boosted profits for Reese's beyond any sales team's dreams and took a cheap novelty manufacturing plant that made umbrellas, children's tricycles, beginner bikes with training wheels and strollers for a little girl's dollies from a struggling entity fighting to meet payroll for a shopful of unskiled laborers in Tokyo to a North American powerhouse that was building and selling an entry level bike built with no real understanding of what a real BMX racing bike was or how they were made. That's the power of the film industry's ability to promote a brand just by making it visible for just 3 seconds in 3 different scenes. Specially with the films they make that are focused on a children's audience but just plausible enough so that the money earning adult audience will sit through 90 minutes of video shit just for the kids. Then spend the next 3 months listening to the temper tantrums of that screaming crotch goblin demanding they buy them whatever toy, breakfast cereal or soda the saw in "The Powerpuff Girls do Dallas"! Now imagine that same scenario playing out in every household living room from Sherman Oaks to Senegal. Thats what took Kuwahara to astronomical profits and drove a wave of Asian Investment Teams looking to take another bite out of our American BMX Pie. ET the Extra Terrestrial was released in June of 1982 and by 1984 every maufacturer I listed at the beginning of my rant had been pressured to sell out or fold. The company I was proud to take a paycheck from, Race Inc., refused to sell and the shop I had called a home for six years could no longer afford to keep the doors open. Bill was hounded by the IRS until he died in 2011. During the 70s Asia had been busy buying and stockpiling our resources and when those resources started getting thin in the 80s we were dependant on them to sell it back to us. At first they did keep America rolling but when they saw an angle to make a big cash haul, like they did with the huge rise in BMX bike sales, they cut off the supplies of steel and aluminum tubing and when they did see these companies starting to fall, Asia would string the needed materials out at ten times thenormal cost and in minimal amounts. They did this until they killed the American BMX Manufacturing Industry which came at the end of the 80s. They still do the same today with other American fields of business. I dont know how or when or even IF America will recover but I sure know where, when and why it started. So I end this rant with FUCK ASIA, FUCK KUWAHARA and LONG LIVE THE SPORT OF AMERICAN BMX!!! Now everybody piss off, Big Valley's on and i need another drink!
Nice video, and congrats on your purchase! Just a few things that I’d like to comment on. First, the original Elliot bike is not owned by Tom. It was revealed after he bought the bike that the one he has is a replica that was built for him. Second, the ET bike was never offered by Kuwahara with gold components, however there were some bike shops that were swapping the black bits for gold bits to try and help move stock that wasn’t selling.
Very nice bike! Thanks for sharing, I learned a few things! ✌️&🫶
Love these videos Mate.
Dang, I owned one of these when I was a kid,, got it for my 6th birthday. Then later at 10 or 11 upgraded to a chromoly Redline RL series.
I remember my brother saved every penny and had to special order it through our local bicycle shop in Michigan and like everything back then wait until the first run was built and shipped
With all due respect to the Content creator here, Midlife BMX, the celebration of Kuwahara is understandable to those who understood BMX from the consumer's point of view but to those of us who were behind the scenes in the creators of the sport position and who were making a living from the manufacturing, the promotion and as the sponsors of racing teams, ET and Kuwahara were the death knell of American BMX at all levels. Back in the day there was little to no involvement from overseas manufacturing in the world of BMX. There was Tom Heininger, Dan Gurney, Skip Hess, Linn Kastin,Gary Turner, Bill Bastian, Scot Breithaupt and Gary&Craig Cook.
These men dominated the aftermarket BMX racing frame and fork set manufacturing and sales across the Country. Respectively, these men were the founders of Webco, DG Racing, Mongoose, Redline, GT, Race Inc, SE Racing and Cook Bros. Racing and their products were the beginning, the be all, end all that was American BMX and they had no equal in the sport. Then came a fantasy film that caught the eye of every little kid around the world who fell in love with the idea of owning the bike that flies across the sky so they can take their alien on whatever adventures they could find. The children who got their parents to buy one had no aspirations to race bicycles, they wanted what was in the movie, a boy, his Reese's eating wart and the bicycle that thought it was a Cessna. Speilberg's product placement in the film boosted profits for Reese's beyond any sales team's dreams and took a cheap novelty manufacturing plant that made umbrellas, children's tricycles, beginner bikes with training wheels and strollers for a little girl's dollies from a struggling entity fighting to meet payroll for a shopful of unskiled laborers in Tokyo to a North American powerhouse that was building and selling an entry level bike built with no real understanding of what a real BMX racing bike was or how they were made. That's the power of the film industry's ability to promote a brand just by making it visible for just 3 seconds in 3 different scenes. Specially with the films they make that are focused on a children's audience but just plausible enough so that the money earning adult audience will sit through 90 minutes of video shit just for the kids. Then spend the next 3 months listening to the temper tantrums of that screaming crotch goblin demanding they buy them whatever toy, breakfast cereal or soda the saw in "The Powerpuff Girls do Dallas"! Now imagine that same scenario playing out in every household living room from Sherman Oaks to Senegal. Thats what took Kuwahara to astronomical profits and drove a wave of Asian Investment Teams looking to take another bite out of our American BMX Pie.
ET the Extra Terrestrial was released in June of 1982 and by 1984 every maufacturer I listed at the beginning of my rant had been pressured to sell out or fold. The company I was proud to take a paycheck from, Race Inc., refused to sell and the shop I had called a home for six years could no longer afford to keep the doors open. Bill was hounded by the IRS until he died in 2011. During the 70s Asia had been busy buying and stockpiling our resources and when those resources started getting thin in the 80s we were dependant on them to sell it back to us. At first they did keep America rolling but when they saw an angle to make a big cash haul, like they did with the huge rise in BMX bike sales, they cut off the supplies of steel and aluminum tubing and when they did see these companies starting to fall, Asia would string the needed materials out at ten times thenormal cost and in minimal amounts. They did this until they killed the American BMX Manufacturing Industry which came at the end of the 80s. They still do the same today with other American fields of business. I dont know how or when or even IF America will recover but I sure know where, when and why it started. So I end this rant with FUCK ASIA, FUCK KUWAHARA and LONG LIVE THE SPORT OF AMERICAN BMX!!!
Now everybody piss off, Big Valley's on and i need another drink!
All this time I thought Elliot and the gang were riding Mongoose. 😢
Nice video, and congrats on your purchase! Just a few things that I’d like to comment on. First, the original Elliot bike is not owned by Tom. It was revealed after he bought the bike that the one he has is a replica that was built for him. Second, the ET bike was never offered by Kuwahara with gold components, however there were some bike shops that were swapping the black bits for gold bits to try and help move stock that wasn’t selling.
thanks for the info👍
Saw these in 80 all were driven into ground a discount store had thes an sold dirt cheep 80 store in USA
I love thankyou
I sold mine for a tenner when it looked like BMX in the UK had died. Stupid mistake!