All

We've had this discussion amongst the Vital staff as well, which basically resulted in our "Best Of 2025" Gear Show a couple of weeks ago: https://www.vitalmtb.com/videos/member/best-new-mtb-products-2025-vital…. We'd be super interested in hearing the answers from the greater community to this question as well - what stood out to you guys in "Team Green" at large :-) ? We felt like it was a year of incremental advancement and refinement, as opposed to new innovations that stood above the others in a more significant way.

Some time ago pretty much every crown was a bolted affair, sometimes even steerer tubes. Then one day folx figured out they could nip a bit of weight off and skip a manufacturing step by going to press fit crowns and folx have been suffering ever since.

I hear you, understanding consumer precarity matters, and I agree that headline metrics like GDP don’t capture the lived reality for many households. Consumers absolutely can’t participate in discretionary categories like cycling if they feel unstable. Where I diverge a bit is in the framing of “overwhelming suffering and lack of opportunities.” I don’t want to minimize anyone’s challenges, consumer stress is real, and unevenly distributed, but relative to almost any point in history, opportunity, access, and quality of life are still comparatively high. That context matters. If we overcorrect the narrative, we risk drawing conclusions or building models that...

Agree with others, closing the thread with no alternative is hard to wrap my head around. Alternatively, and I'm fully ready to get downvoted for this, but the "Crab" thing was getting really overplayed, I'm ready for that to chill out. Funny joke while it lasted, doesn't need to be repeated every day in response to every topic.

This is what I logged on to suggest as well. It seems like a solid compromise, no?

It used the South Park underwear gnomes episode as inspiration..

I know the visuals and tubing profiles aren't the same, but the suspension design is (minus the horst link)

It kinda looks like it could be a generic bike out of Asia also. I have seen quite a few open mold companies selling direct and coming out side some actually nice looking designs. It could also explain the parts mix that is on it. If it was a photo for a larger company, it wouldn't have lower/mid-tier products on it. That said, what's going on with the chain stay? It looks beat to hell and I'm hoping that black piece is just a shadow, it looks like it's a leaf spring or just flat out broken.

OK boomer...