TurboSpoke tm BikeRod&Kustom Road Test Results Summary The product is well-designed and manufactured, and looks pretty cool on a bike. In my opinion, it doesn't sound terribly much like an actual motorcycle engine, but I'm sure that's merely an age/experience thing. When I was a kid, and utilizing playing cards in my spokes to achieve a very similar sound, I remember that it sounded absolutely thrilling to my friends and I; and that's what counts, innit? While I personally wouldn't be caught dead solo-riding down Broadway with one of these things on my beater bike, for fear that my hipster image would suffer irreparable damage, I should point out that this would not be so for a group of hipsters on cool bikes. In the setting of a group Kustom Kruise, the noise of a bunch of them would probably sound cool and thrilling, at least to the riders themselves. And, lets face it, it's pretty tough to lose your hipster cred, no matter what you stick onto a bike, providing it's a really cool one. At this moment (5/08/04, to the best of my knowledge, TurboSpoke tm is not available in any toy stores in the US, or possibly the World; however you may rest assured that this will change fairly quickly. I have been told by Tomax that it will be in stores in the US in July. The folks at Tomax are extremely fortunate to have a product such as this rolling out at the same time as the kiddy chopper-style bikes, exemplified by the new Schwinn Stingray Chopper, which will rule the market for the next decade or so. After all, shouldn't a bike which looks like a motorcycle sound like one too? If you're a kid at the "Golden Age", of course it should.. For those of you who just can't stand waiting until it shows up at your neighborhood toy store, the TurboSpoke tm consumer website has an on-line store page where it may be purchased with US$ or other currencies, and shipped to you anywhere in the world, presumably. Below is shown the contents of the TurboSpoke tm kit which will be sold in US stores. It also has, in the words of Gavin Maxwell of Tomax, " Turbospoke Moto Cards" These are designed to create variable engine sounds depending on how far they are presented to the spokes and have different shapes V8 , 4-Stroke , 2-Stroke etc." My friends and I never mastered that trick with playing cards and clothes-pins -Jim Wilson |
When the package arrived, I was tempted to just mount it to my bike and test it myself. However, I didn't feel that it was image or age-appropriate. A grown man who rides down Broadway in Manhattan. on a bike fitted with a kiddy noise-maker will have a hard time maintaining that hipster persona we all prize so much here. My daughter was pretty much out of the running, too. She's a 19-year-old art student now, with her own hipster persona, and besides, her bike, Killer Swan, with its totally covered frame has no place accessible to mount something like the TurboSpoke tm. Plus, this sort of bike accessory is very much a boy thing, in spite of the mixed genders depicted in "Team TurboSpoke"tm. No, what I needed was a boy test pilot; and since "The Golden Age Of Bicycling" is about ten, that was the preferable age. Fortunately, the loft building in which I dwell has always had a few kids living in it.The earliest crop of them, including my daughter, are all in college now, but some have been born into the building since then. I immediately thought of my photographer neighbor Bruno, who has a son the right age, whom I've seen with a bike on numerous occasions. I immediately knocked on Bruno's door, showed him a photo of the toy and asked if his son Max would be interested in undertaking the mission, and be documented while doing it. You can easily guess the response. Yesterday afterrnoon I took the test unit downstairs to Bruno's studio, handed the package to him and Max, and documented them mounting it to Max's new bike. The process took about five minutes. It might have taken less time had we read the detailed instruction sheet which came with it, but real men don't use instruction sheets- it's an aspect of our guy personas. There's a little polyethylene plastic pin on an integral flexible lanyard which is retained by one of the clamping screws. This locks the plastic spoke card in place, and as we later learned, also locks the "exhaust megaphone" into the chainstay clamp/card holder. This system is quite elegant, and is an example of the design thoroughness of the unit. Once the mounting was accomplished, we set out for nearby Union Square Park, my usual proving grounds for bike hardware. We decided to leave the card out of the device while the bike was en-route leaving the pin out of the mount. This is how we discovered that the same pin secures the megaphone part. There was no damage to it, though, as the design of the plastic component makes it pretty sturdy. |
I visited Tomax Ltd's web site to find out more about it. I was gratified to see that it was a hi-tech update on the classic "playing card in the spokes" method. Since my youth, I've made and seen electronic devices designed to do the same job, but they've been expensive, heavy, and battery-intensive. This gizmo, using no batteries at all has a significant advantage. I decided that I owed our younger readers, and the children of our older ones a test of this device, so I got in touch with Tomax's American PR agency- Pacific Dialogue, to see about getting my hands on one, for testing purposes.. Bob Miko, of the Stratford, CT-located agency obliged and sent me one forthwith. I was pretty impressed by the toy and its packaging. Much thought has obviously gone into the design of the product and its various accoutrements. The device was designed in Ireland, it is manufactured in China, and I predict that it will sell like hotcakes in the USA. It comes with three different cards depicting cartoon characters of "Team TurboSpoke"tm. I smell a TV series in the offing. If the idea of an anime'-style cartoon series about youth who have noisemaking "exhaust pipes" on their bicycles seems unlikely, you obviously haven't been watching much TV. Both "Pokemon" and "Card Captors" were equally far-fetched toy-and-collector-card-based concepts which were quite popular in our household, until fairly recently. The character cards are used in the device, singly, to brush against the wheel spokes. The package includes a little plastic wallet to hold the cards. Also in the package is a nice little zippered pouch for holding the two screws which clamp the device to the left chainstay, and an allen hex wrench to use on them. This is the only tool required to perform the installation. Included in the package are two spares for the rubbery cushion which lines the chainstay clamp, to prevent paint marring. A sheet covered in "Team TurboSpoke" tm and "TurboSpoke"tm stickers for optional application to the owner's bike and the unit itself, is also furnished. |
BikeRod&Kustom Road Test: Tomax Limited's |
Engine Sound Simulator |
In my youth, my friends and I put a lot of energy into devising ways of making our bikes sound like motorcycles. One method we developed used one of those sausage-shaped balloons, inflated, tied at each end to a fender brace and twisted so tension held it against the wheel's spokes. This made a very satisfying "Lub-Dub" sound. Unfortunately, this method had a very short duty life. So, we usually used the playing-card method, which consisted of a card fixed to the fender brace with a spring-type clothes pin. It had the advantage of being cheap and durable. Imagine my surprise when a press release for a new product called TurboSpoke tm. showed up in my In-Box, recently. |
I visited Tomax Ltd's web site to find out more about it. I was gratified to see that it was a hi-tech update on the classic "playing card in the spokes" method. Since my youth, I've made and seen electronic devices designed to do the same job, but they've been expensive, heavy, and battery-intensive. This gizmo, using no batteries at all has a significant advantage. I decided that I owed our younger readers, and the children of our older ones a test of this device, so I got in touch with Tomax's American PR agency- Pacific Dialogue, to see about getting my hands on one, for testing purposes.. Bob Miko, of the Stratford, CT-located agency obliged and sent me one forthwith. I was pretty impressed by the toy and its packaging. Much thought has obviously gone into the design of the product and its various accoutrements. The device was designed in Ireland, it is manufactured in China, and I predict that it will sell like hotcakes in the USA. It comes with three different cards depicting cartoon characters of "Team TurboSpoke"tm. I smell a TV series in the offing. If the idea of an anime'-style cartoon series about youth who have noisemaking "exhaust pipes" on their bicycles seems unlikely, you obviously haven't been watching much TV. Both "Pokemon" and "Card Captors" were equally far-fetched toy-and-collector-card-based concepts which were quite popular in our household, until fairly recently. The character cards are used in the device, singly, to brush against the wheel spokes. The package includes a little plastic wallet to hold the cards. Also in the package is a nice little zippered pouch for holding the two screws which clamp the device to the left chainstay, and an allen hex wrench to use on them. This is the only tool required to perform the installation. Included in the package are two spares for the rubbery cushion which lines the chainstay clamp, to prevent paint marring. A sheet covered in "Team TurboSpoke" tm and "TurboSpoke"tm stickers for optional application to the owner's bike and the unit itself, is also furnished. |
When the package arrived, I was tempted to just mount it to my bike and test it myself. However, I didn't feel that it was image or age-appropriate. A grown man who rides down Broadway in Manhattan. on a bike fitted with a kiddy noise-maker will have a hard time maintaining that hipster persona we all prize so much here. My daughter was pretty much out of the running, too. She's a 19-year-old art student now, with her own hipster persona, and besides, her bike, Killer Swan, with its totally covered frame has no place accessible to mount something like the TurboSpoke tm. Plus, this sort of bike accessory is very much a boy thing, in spite of the mixed genders depicted in "Team TurboSpoke"tm. No, what I needed was a boy test pilot; and since "The Golden Age Of Bicycling" is about ten, that was the preferable age. Fortunately, the loft building in which I dwell has always had a few kids living in it.The earliest crop of them, including my daughter, are all in college now, but some have been born into the building since then. I immediately thought of my photographer neighbor Bruno, who has a son the right age, whom I've seen with a bike on numerous occasions. I immediately knocked on Bruno's door, showed him a photo of the toy and asked if his son Max would be interested in undertaking the mission, and be documented while doing it. You can easily guess the response. Yesterday afterrnoon I took the test unit downstairs to Bruno's studio, handed the package to him and Max, and documented them mounting it to Max's new bike. The process took about five minutes. It might have taken less time had we read the detailed instruction sheet which came with it, but real men don't use instruction sheets- it's an aspect of our guy personas. There's a little polyethylene plastic pin on an integral flexible lanyard which is retained by one of the clamping screws. This locks the plastic spoke card in place, and as we later learned, also locks the "exhaust megaphone" into the chainstay clamp/card holder. This system is quite elegant, and is an example of the design thoroughness of the unit. Once the mounting was accomplished, we set out for nearby Union Square Park, my usual proving grounds for bike hardware. We decided to leave the card out of the device while the bike was en-route leaving the pin out of the mount. This is how we discovered that the same pin secures the megaphone part. There was no damage to it, though, as the design of the plastic component makes it pretty sturdy. |
Left: TurboSpoke tm mounted on Max's bike, prior to the first test run. The Megaphone part is actually vacuum- metallized plastic, but looks very much like chrome-plated metal, albeit of plating quality similar to that of a WALD-brand bike fender. This slightly granular surface probably makes the component more realistic-looking. The red end cap, in addition to strengthening the megaphone, also serves as a reflector. The holes allow the sound to exit. Some amplfication properties are claimed for the shape. Maybe it's so, but I couldn't swear to that. The noise level is certainly sufficient.. |
Below: TurboSpoke tm in action at NYC's Union Square Park. Spectator reaction ranged from green with envy (other kids) to indifference (self-involved young adults) to irritation (elderly bench-sitters). One would assume that a noise-maker on a bike would act as a warning signal to pedestrians; but one hipster-black-clad young woman was so self-absorbed that she walked right in front of Max during one of his runs, giving him the opportunity to also test out the brakes of his new Schwinn. Fortunately, they worked; but it was a close call. There were no other near-disasters during the testing. |
TurboSpoke tm BikeRod&Kustom Road Test Results Summary The product is well-designed and manufactured, and looks pretty cool on a bike. In my opinion, it doesn't sound terribly much like an actual motorcycle engine, but I'm sure that's merely an age/experience thing. When I was a kid, and utilizing playing cards in my spokes to achieve a very similar sound, I remember that it sounded absolutely thrilling to my friends and I; and that's what counts, innit? While I personally wouldn't be caught dead solo-riding down Broadway with one of these things on my beater bike, for fear that my hipster image would suffer irreparable damage, I should point out that this would not be so for a group of hipsters on cool bikes. In the setting of a group Kustom Kruise, the noise of a bunch of them would probably sound cool and thrilling, at least to the riders themselves. And, lets face it, it's pretty tough to lose your hipster cred, no matter what you stick onto a bike, providing it's a really cool one. At this moment (5/08/04, to the best of my knowledge, TurboSpoke tm is not available in any toy stores in the US, or possibly the World; however you may rest assured that this will change fairly quickly. I have been told by Tomax that it will be in stores in the US in July. The folks at Tomax are extremely fortunate to have a product such as this rolling out at the same time as the kiddy chopper-style bikes, exemplified by the new Schwinn Stingray Chopper, which will rule the market for the next decade or so. After all, shouldn't a bike which looks like a motorcycle sound like one too? If you're a kid at the "Golden Age", of course it should.. For those of you who just can't stand waiting until it shows up at your neighborhood toy store, the TurboSpoke tm consumer website has an on-line store page where it may be purchased with US$ or other currencies, and shipped to you anywhere in the world, presumably. Below is shown the contents of the TurboSpoke tm kit which will be sold in US stores. It also has, in the words of Gavin Maxwell of Tomax, " Turbospoke Moto Cards" These are designed to create variable engine sounds depending on how far they are presented to the spokes and have different shapes V8 , 4-Stroke , 2-Stroke etc." My friends and I never mastered that trick with playing cards and clothes-pins -Jim Wilson |
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