Are Mini Bikes Toys for kids ?

Every kid grows up and sooner or later either has a bicycle or dirt bike depending on what the parents could afford. Back in the old days when your choices where limited to the Big 4 manufacturers like Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki only the well off could afford hefty price tags of a few thousand to ride the beginner model pee wee 50 or 90. Back then some 10 years ago it was just too expensive for the beginner to get into motocross. The introduction of the Chinese Mini Bikes (Monkey Bike, copy of the Honda) it opened up a can of worms for the Big Japanese manufactures who had it sweet all this time with little or no competition in the bottom end range 50cc-100cc. The Chinese bikes flooded the market some six years ago in Australia and couple years earlier in the States. This basically cut out the low end market for the Japanese bikes and allowed newbie motocross riders to get into the sport at a entry level.

No real distribution channels were correctly setup because the Chinese would sell and anyone. Mom and Pop backyard operations sprung up like the plague all across America, Europe, Canada and Australia.

The Chinese pumped these out like hot cakes and thousands of containers of Mini bikes entered the shores. The Bikes were mostly made of reinforced mild steel for the frames, and recycled alloy hubs which were weak at he spokes. The finish was not great to begin and attention to detail took a back seat to pure volume.

Being that said the bikes were so cheap to get and the average kid could start on a 50cc or 110cc pit bike with all the protection and armor for under $1000. The bikes wouldn't last and basically became a throw away item. It was cheaper to replace the whole bike then it was to pay a mechanic to fix it. If the engine blew up you would rebuild it just throw away the old one and slam in a new one.

Kids and teenagers took to these bikes abused and destroyed them. They were not a machine to be serviced and maintained as they should but because they were so cheap they treated them like toys. Disposable toys like when DVD & MP3 players.