BMX Racing History · Chapter 7 · Legend Bike Co

Mongoose: From a Garage in Simi Valley to Every Driveway in America

Mongoose never set out to be a bike company. It set out to be a wheel. One part, designed by an engineer who was sick of watching kids tear their bikes apart. Three years later that one wheel had turned into the biggest BMX-only manufacturer on the planet. Ten years later the name on it became the first original BMX brand to get bought up by corporate America. Boom to buyout — the whole story of the industry runs straight through this one company.

The Engineer Watching the Kids

Skip Hess came at this from drag racing and the car wheel business. Mechanical engineering degree out of San Diego State. Years at Superior Industries designing wheels for cars. His own Anglia drag cars back in the early 60s. So in September 1974, when he's watching the neighborhood kids in Simi Valley launch their bikes off jumps and fold their spoked wheels up like pretzels, he does the one thing a wheel guy would do. He builds a wheel that won't bend.

The Motomag One was one piece, cast alloy, heat-treated, five spokes — built like the car wheels Hess had made his whole career. Kids could jump it off anything and it just took it. And it nailed the look of that era so hard that even now, nothing on earth says 1975 like a bike rolling on Motomags. BMX Products, Inc. existed to build them. The factory on Superior Street in Chatsworth eventually cranked out something like 600 frames a day.

The Name

The name didn't come off a drawing board. It came from drag racing. Hess's buddy Tom McEwen went by "The Mongoose" so the promoters could book him against his big rival, Don "The Snake" Prudhomme — a mongoose being about the only thing that'll kill a cobra. Hess liked it, borrowed it, trademarked it somewhere between 1975 and early 1976, and slapped it on his first complete bike in late 1975.

The Goose Years

The complete Mongoose landed in shops late in 1975. Chromoly front triangle, Motomags, race-ready right out of the box at a price a parent wouldn't choke on. The Team Mongoose came in 1977 with a full chromoly frame. Then 1979 brought the Supergoose — the one a whole generation circled in the Christmas catalog and prayed for. By 1982 BMX Action was straight up calling BMX Products the biggest BMX-only manufacturer in the world.

And the factory team earned it. Eric Rupe — one of the great pros of that whole era, a Hall of Famer — signed on right before Thanksgiving 1981, fresh off a season ranked NBL #4 Pro. Jeff Kosmala carried the plate. So did Tim "Fuzzy" Hall, in his own time. Greg Hill spent a stretch of that long career on the Shimano/Mongoose program. The brand even landed in the movies — that chrome Supergoose under "Goose" in 1983's BMX Bandits, right there next to a young Nicole Kidman.

First In, First Out

Spring 1985: American Recreation Group bought BMX Products and the Mongoose name. First time a public company ever bought one of the original BMX builders. Hess hung on as president clear through 1991. After that the name just kept moving — Bell Sports in the mid-90s, Brunswick in 1997 for $22 million, Pacific Cycle in 2000, Dorel Industries in 2004, and Pon Holdings in January 2022, part of an $810 million portfolio deal.

These days Mongoose sells the whole range, from kids' bikes in the big-box stores to a real freestyle line. Still puts riders on the team too — Kevin Peraza has taken X Games gold on one. And they re-issue the old stuff: the Supergoose, the California Special, and yeah, the Motomag, back in production almost fifty years after Skip Hess cast that first one.

Timeline

• 1974 Skip Hess designs the Motomag One and founds BMX Products, Inc. in Simi Valley, September 1974.
• 1975 Motomags on bikes everywhere; first complete Mongoose ships late in the year.
• 1975–76 Mongoose name trademarked — borrowed from drag racer Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen.
• 1977 Team Mongoose introduced; full catalog year 1978.
• 1979 Supergoose launches. NBA Mongoose Grand National controversy.
• 1981 Eric Rupe signs with the factory team.
• 1982 BMX Action calls BMX Products the world's largest BMX-only manufacturer.
• 1983 Chrome Supergoose stars in BMX Bandits.
• 1985 American Recreation Group buys the company — the first corporate buyout of an original BMX brand. Hess stays as president until 1991.
• 1997 Brunswick buys Mongoose from Bell Sports for $22M.
• 2000–04 Pacific Cycle, then Dorel Industries.
• 2022 Pon Holdings acquires the portfolio. Motomag III re-issue follows.