Pedal power: Big Wheel brings back big memories

In my neighborhood during the late 1970s, you either traveled by Big Wheel, or you didn't travel.

All the kids on the block had those low-slung plastic tricycles. I'd start pedaling mine around town shortly after getting up each summer morning, my legs fueled by the two or three bowls of Cap'n Crunch cereal I inhaled on the way out.

My friends and I rode our Big Wheels everywhere. We raced down the sidewalk. We jumped over curbs. Best of all, we spun out in driveways, using the all-important hand brake.

I've been thinking about Big Wheels lately because I now have a child of my own. If there's one toy from my youth that I absolutely must pass on to him, it's the Big Wheel.

I was horrified, then, when a co-worker heard that the Big Wheel was going extinct. Happily, that's not the case.

The Big Wheel is alive and well, thanks to a California-based plastics company called Gammaˆ² (formerly Gamma Plastics).

Jim Harrigan, a sales and marketing rep for Gammaˆ², said the company started making Big Wheels early this year, after a short period in which they were no longer being produced.

"It's the only toy we manufacture," Harrigan said. "(Toy manufacturing) is something the company has been looking into for awhile."

Production of the Big Wheel is still moving a bit slowly, so it might take you a while to find one. Harrigan suggests looking at major retailers, like Wal-Mart or Target, as well as toy outlets that specialize in vintage products.

"I got into retailing in the late 1960s, when the Big Wheel first came out," he said. "It was the biggest item around at the time. It's amazing that it's still going."

It's not so amazing to me.

The Big Wheel could very well be the perfect toy. It's durable. It helps build strength and stamina. (Getting up to spinout speed requires some serious pedaling!) And it's safe. I think.

Harrigan explained that the new Big Wheel is almost identical to the model I had. It has the same 16-inch front wheel, the same adjustable seat (the Big Wheel grows with you!) and the same brightly colored plastic frame.

Unfortunately, one thing is different. The new version has no hand brake. And that's not a Gammaˆ² innovation; apparently, Big Wheels haven't had them for years.

What?

The hand brake is everything! It's what allows you to spin out, and spinning out is what moved the Big Wheel from "pretty cool" to the rank of "unbelievably awesome."

Harrigan didn't know exactly when, or why, the hand brake disappeared. So I consulted unofficial Big Wheel expert Matt Armbruster.

Armbruster, 39, is a lifelong Big Wheel fan who organizes a charity event each year called the Big Wheel Rally, in which otherwise well-adjusted adults race through Boulder, Colo., on souped-up Big Wheels.

"I have no idea why the hand brake went away," Armbruster said. "I've never come across mention of a class-action lawsuit or anything like that that would have forced them to stop making it."

The good news, Armbruster said, is that some Big Wheel knockoffs being made today still have the brake. And even without it, he said, spinouts are still possible. It's just a matter of locking the pedals and leaning the right way.

"I'm pretty sure that the earliest Big Wheels didn't have the brake, but we still spun out on them," he said.

All right. Maybe a brake-less Big Wheel will work out fine. I guess I could buy my son a Big Wheel knockoff, but this is one of the few times when I really want him to have the true-blue original.

Of course, he's just 9 months old. He can't even walk, much less pedal a Big Wheel into the kind of triple-Axel/double-Lutz combo spins we achieved in my day. But it's good to know that on some future Christmas morning, a Big Wheel will be waiting for him under the tree.

And maybe I'll follow Armbruster's lead and soup one up for myself. What could be more fun than a father-and-son spinout?