Craptastic “Hery Poter” Chinese Children’s Bikes
I’m in Ethiopia for work for a couple of weeks. Wandering around Addis Ababa this afternoon, I came across a store with this row of stunningly crappy Chinese children’s bikes and decided to investigate them a little more closely.
This “Hery Poter” model is a particularly remarkable example of how low bike quality can go. It’s a crazy overwhelming, hideous Frankenstein mish-mash of crap “features” designed to signal “quality” and convince extremely unsophisticated consumers that the bike is worth the $30 or $40 it might cost (prices are rarely fixed here…).
Have you ever seen a children’s beginner bike that features both training wheels and mountain bike-style bar ends? And as if that’s not enough crap on the handlebars, you also get a bell, a water bottle, and a mirror positioned for looking at your own chest!
The Hery Poter chain guard (with Santa!) would be helpful in keeping grease off your pant leg if the chain came with any lubricant on it at all. But it doesn’t. None of the bikes in this shop seemed to have more than the very lightest hint of lubrication. Just enough to keep everything from rusting until you get it home and your child rides it through its first puddle in order to test those awesome fenders (and “shocks”).
The extra seat on the back is a classy addition – when your child wobbles out into African traffic on their training wheels, they’ll have space for little sister to hang on behind them. Don’t forget to use your bell, honey!
Of course there is another Chinese bike option for dealing with Africa’s legendary traffic: go for the model with integrated handlebar-mounted laser ray guns!
I could not get these ray guns to fire laser beams at all. What crap.
And for the baby in the family what else will do but a Rambo Lovely Baby tricycle?!
All this would be funnier if it weren’t such a classic example of the quality of all the consumer goods here in Ethiopia, from housewares to tools. Most of these goods are imported from China and sold in small “general merchandise” shops, and they are typically of lower quality than we would find in an American 99-cent store. People here have to work harder, for longer, to buy this crap, and they take it home and it breaks immediately. Except for the crappy stuff that can be kept running forever, like the early 80’s-vintage Russian Lada cars that still ply the streets of Addis by the hundreds (thousands?) as taxis, spewing blue diesel exhaust.
This is amazing. Where, I dare ask, would a child ride in Addis anyway?
Oh I think plenty of people live in compounds or have driveways behind gates or live down pretty quiet little dirt lanes with few vehicles.
man this is some amazingly hilarious stuff, and then the dose of “99¢ store” reality that is just so world-wearily sad. but i love the crazy cultural mashup, and thanks for the report from the field…
It goes from downright funny to kind of super discouraging.
The lazer guns don’t shoot. Love the Cabelo art earlier in the blog, tho.
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Hery Potter bikes-awkward. I would like it if they looked more like a broomstick. Awesome post! Life in the twenty first century man, tough!
Wow … a lot of the families in my practice travel to adopt from Ethiopia. I think I’m going to have to ask them to bring me home a Rambo Lovely Baby trike. Although I’m tempted by the child seat on the back of the hairy poter model.
What brings you to Africa?
We have a very large project here supporting the Ministry of Health to improve the HIV care and clinical infrastructure in about a third of the country. http:/www.go2itech.org
Very very cool. I’m a UCSF/UW kinda guy, too.