Hyper Bikes

Two Brands, One Name — From a Teenager's Garage to Walmart's Bike Aisle, 1983 to Today

A BMXRacingHistory.com chapter · hosted on Legend Bike Co

We are telling this story the same way we told the origin piece and the SE Racing chapter: neutrally. No brand gets elevated. No rider gets shorted. Where the record is contested, we say so.

Two different companies, one shared name

The name "Hyper" shows up in two completely different places in BMX history. The two companies are not related — not by ownership, not by location, not by product. They share a name, and that is it. Anyone researching the brand needs to know which Hyper they are looking at before any of the rest of it makes sense.

The first Hyper was a small mid-1980s California brand designed and run by a teenager named Billy Farrell. It existed for roughly two years, produced a handful of frames, ran ads in the BMX press, and shut down after Billy was killed in a car accident in 1985.

The second Hyper — the one that exists today — is Hyper Bicycles, Inc., founded in 1990 in Malaga, New Jersey by former BMX pro Clay Goldsmid and his partner Erick Weinstetter. That brand is still operating, owned by Goldsmid, and is the company behind the Hyper BMX bikes sold at Walmart and the Pro Shop catalog on hyperbicycles.com.

The original Hyper — Billy Farrell, 1983 to 1985

The first Hyper came out of California in the early 1980s, in the period when BMX was at its commercial peak and a teenager with a welder, a sketch pad, and a parent willing to drive to the print shop could realistically start a frame brand.

Billy Farrell designed the Hyper frame and ran the company while he was still in high school. His father, also named Bill, shot the photography for the brand's magazine advertising. The company's catalog was small — frames, forks, and the supporting parts a small builder could put their name on. Greg Grubbs rode for Hyper from mid-1984 through the end of 1985 and is the most-named team rider from the period in the surviving sources.

The company's run ended the way nobody plans for. Billy Farrell was killed in a car accident in the fall of 1985, during his sophomore year of college. Hyper shut down soon after.

Hyper Bicycles, Inc. — Malaga, New Jersey, 1990

Five years after the original Hyper closed, a new BMX brand picked up the same name on the other side of the country. Hyper Bicycles, Inc. was founded in 1990 in Malaga, New Jersey, by former BMX pro Clay Goldsmid and his partner Erick Weinstetter. The early product was high-end BMX racing frames and components.

The story of how the second Hyper got its name is one of the small mysteries of the period. There is no public record of a license, sale, or family handoff from the Farrell estate. The most accurate reading from the surviving sources is that the name was simply available by 1990. If a connection ever existed, nobody has documented it.

1993 — Eric Carter, the Metro frame, and a national title

Hyper's first big move on the race side was signing Eric Carter. When Hyper picked him up in 1993, he was already a known quantity at the front of the pro pack.

That season, Carter won the 1993 NBL National No. 1 Pro plate riding a stock Hyper Metro frame. For a brand three years old, beating the established race programs to the season's top NBL plate was the kind of result that built a catalog.

The same season Hyper added Brian Foster, along with Darrin Waterbury and Robbie Morales.

The 2000s — freestyle, Mike Spinner, and a wider catalog

By the 2000s, Hyper had grown the catalog past pure race. Freestyle frames and complete bikes joined the line. The most visible freestyle signing of the late 2000s was Mike Spinner, who had a Hyper Pro Model bike in the catalog through roughly 2010-2011.

In January 2013, Hyper signed Scotty Cranmer — an X Games BMX Park gold medalist out of New Jersey. Cranmer worked with Hyper on a signature frame. Ryan Williams — the Australian rider known across BMX and scooter for Nitro Circus — has also been on the Hyper roster in the years since.

The pivot to mass market

The decision that defines Hyper today — more than any single frame or rider — was the move into the bicycle mass market. Hyper became, and remains, one of the bike brands carried at Walmart — adult and kids' BMX, the Jet Fuel BMX line in 20-inch, 26-inch, and 29-inch sizes, mountain bikes, kids' bikes, electric bikes, scooters, and hoverboards.

The Pro Shop side of the business did not go away. Hyper still publishes a separate Pro Shop catalog on hyperbicycles.com covering BMX racing frames, freestyle frames, mountain bikes, and apparel.

Electric, mountain, and the broader bike business

Through the 2010s and 2020s the catalog kept widening. Hyper rolled out mountain bikes under Eric Carter's product-development leadership, added electric-bike and electric-scooter product, and pushed into hoverboards through the related Hyper Toys brand.

Where Hyper fits

Hyper sits in a small group. Mongoose and Diamondback went the mass-market route earlier and on a bigger scale. Redline, GT, Hutch, and Haro stayed (or are remembered as) specialty.

Hyper started later than most (1990), came up out of the New Jersey side of BMX rather than the Southern California side, won a national title in its third year, and then made the call to take the brand into Walmart and stay there.

Sources

Hyper Bicycles official site (hyperbicycles.com). BMXmuseum.com — Hyper Bike Company gallery and forum threads including "1984 HYPER" and "What can you tell me about a HYPER BMX," which document the original Billy Farrell-era Hyper. Wikipedia: Eric Carter (BMX rider), Brian Foster, Scotty Cranmer, Ryan Williams. Pinkbike, ESPN, SugarCayne, FATBMX for Cranmer signing coverage. Walmart.com — Hyper Bicycles brand pages.