Bull Shot Lubricant — What the Record Actually Shows

A Legend Bike Co. brand history page. Bull Shot is a genuinely small, thinly documented period product line. Rather than guess at a founding story, this page reports only what's verifiable, and says plainly where the record runs out.

At a glance

Company Bullshot Systems, Inc.
Products A bicycle chain lube and a bicycle bearing grease
Confirmed period ad August 10, 1984
Today The bullshot.com name is now used by an unrelated household-cleaner company

A name confirmed by a trademark filing, not by a founding story

We could not find a founder's name, a headquarters city or state, or a founding date for Bull Shot Lubricant anywhere in the sources checked for this page — including a direct pass on oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com, the two primary archives Legend Bike Co checks first for any period BMX product. What we can confirm is that the product was sold under a real, registered company: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filings list the trademark owner as Bullshot Systems, Inc. That's the only corporate identity on record. We're not filling in the rest.

The products — a small lube line, not one item

Community recollection among period BMX riders (surfaced through BMXmuseum.com forum threads) names at least two distinct Bull Shot products: Bullshot Max Power Bike Lube, a chain lube, and Bullshot Bicycle Bearing Adhesive Lube, a bearing grease. Riders who remember it describe a lube that ran thick in cold weather, with a clear-to-reddish color, and a grease well regarded at the time for packing headsets and hub bearings. That's secondhand rider memory rather than a company spec sheet, and it's presented here as such.

One dated period ad — August 10, 1984

The strongest single piece of period evidence is a surviving print advertisement, archived with the title "Bullshot Super Bearing Grease," dated August 10, 1984, and tagged to the advertiser "Bullshot Systems." Five ad entries total are catalogued under that advertiser name in the archive checked, though only this one could be confirmed in detail. Which magazine originally ran the ad — BMX Action, BMX Plus!, or Super BMX — is not stated in the archive record, so we're not attributing it to one.

The trademark trail after BMX

Bullshot Systems, Inc. kept filing trademarks well past BMX's 1980s ad era: an "Adhesive Lube" trademark filed in 1998 was abandoned in 2002, and a second filing in 2002 was registered in 2003 and cancelled in 2009. That puts the company on the books, in some form, into the early 2000s — roughly two decades after the one dated ad we found — before it disappears from the public trademark record entirely.

Not the same as today's Bull Shot

A company operating as bullshot.com exists today. It sells household foam cleaners — carpet cleaner, degreaser, glass cleaner — with no bicycle products and no stated tie to the 1980s lubricant line. Absent evidence of a connection, we're treating it as a later, unrelated business that picked up a catchy name, not a continuation of the BMX-era company.

Where the record runs thin

• No founder name. Not documented anywhere checked.
• No headquarters city or state. The USPTO correspondence record that would show this is not publicly accessible.
• No confirmed rider or team sponsorship. Bull Shot reads as an advertised retail product, not a team sponsor, but that's an absence of evidence rather than a confirmed fact.
• Which magazine ran the one confirmed ad. Not stated in the archive record checked.

If you rode in this era and remember Bull Shot Lubricant firsthand — who sold it, where, what it smelled like, whether your local shop stocked it — Legend Bike Co wants to hear from you.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

• The History of BMX (1970-1995)

Sources

trademarks.justia.com — USPTO trademark filings under owner "Bullshot Systems, Inc.," including the 1998 and 2002 "Adhesive Lube" filings. vintage-bmx-ads.blogspot.com, "Bullshot Super Bearing Grease" (archived ad dated August 10, 1984). bmxmuseum.com — forum references to Bullshot Max Power Bike Lube and Bullshot Bicycle Bearing Adhesive Lube. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com — searched directly per Legend Bike Co's standing research order; no usable Bull Shot content located on either site this pass, disclosed honestly rather than filled in with guesswork. bullshot.com — checked to confirm the modern site is a household-cleaner company unrelated to the 1980s bicycle lubricant line.