Six-bar & idler or simple single pivot? Electronically activated integrated MTeeB motor-gearbox units (MGUs) or new-year-new-Unit. Reactive helmet panels & crash detection, or a basic bucket. For those at the bleeding edge of kinematics, suspension performance, frame manufacturing, and human-assisted-motoring, it’s innovate or lie. You’re either bleeding at the edge or claiming that your shuffling-papers-cut was from the tip of the spear.
For those who aren’t pioneering or pretending on the path of easier, lighter, faster, smoother, stronger, and more in-frame storage, it’s a different world. Innovate or wry, maybe. I’m certainly guilty of mocking marginal gains and selectively celebrating improvements I enjoy. Lighter-action brakes and carbon-fibre lever blades are the most blatant of the latter.
In a world where good geometry is free, brands are emboldened in their R&D {ripoff & duplicate} efforts, and with only a slight exaggeration, there seems to be a new bike brand putting out the same rig every week {particularly in the MTeeB market}, the way to sell rigs and stuff is as much about the story as anything.
For the final day of MEATengines Awards for 2025, here are some of my favourites. I’d suggest that the common theme, the common story, is folks making what they want to ride first and then trying to sell it second.
Stridsland
Ride slow, die whenever. What makes Stridsland unique is that Matias both designs his own unique take on bikes & parts for various applications, but also celebrates classic rigs and parts from all sorts of other bike brands right on the front page of his website.
Rock Lobster, Klein, Marin, Specialized, and more. My favourite is this single-speeded Nishiki with Magura hydraulic rim brakes. From the paint to the parts, it’s a bike that I can easily imagine owning. I have a well-earned paranoia about unknown bars and stems, so mine would combine a Nitto removable-faceplate stem and a 31.8mm Stooge alloy bar, and a seat I like. Otherwise, let’s ride.
{Above photos: Stridsland}
This year, Matias launched the most bizarre little one-speedable double-hardtail around the 20+ tire size. Yes, 20″ Plus. The Boom Boat uses 20×2.8″ rubber to fulfill the role of a “Commuter BMX.”
If you weren’t sold, here’s the Stridsland pitch:
“Looking for a bike to fill that unexplainable gap in your stable? You probably don’t need another gravel bike. Honestly, you don’t need a Boom Boat either.. However, they say the day we stop playing is the day we start dying. So technically, the Boom Boat might just be a life-support system.. you know, in case you were looking for some justification.“
This little CommuteMXer combines Boost hub spacing and stealth dropper post routing with a 1-1/8″ headset (EC34) and even comes in three sizes.
{Above photos: Stridsland Journal}
Then there’s the bike I’m really excited about hasn’t been launched for pre-sale yet, but it’s the 65° HTA 27+/MX+ double-hardtail Barge. It’s a potential {small batch} production bike that will appeal to the tens of folks riding rigid forks on technical trails. Pretty damn exciting!
Anywho, for what it’s worth, from legacy chain ring BSDs to a collection of neat custom frames and a focus on bicycles being fun – commuting, ATB, mountain biking, etc. – Stridsland is a {MEATengines} award-winning story.
{Above photos: Stridsland Journal}
Outlier
“They’re not regular pedals.“
The first time I saw Outlier’s one-sided Pendulum pedal, it was just a passion project. Thousands of dollars in prototypes chasing an idea because the idea needed to be chased. Self-righting solutions were still being sorted. Questions about making a smaller size were easily answered with a lack of commitment to even making one size. Now Outlier is a legit pedal company with two models in stock and who-knows-how-many ideas in various states of prototyping.
I have hundreds of hours of riding on both the two-sided Void pedal and the one-sided drop-body Pendulum. On the surface, neither is a product I should love. Fantastic grip? Yes. Super comfy thanks to the lack of center axle? Yes. But here I am celebrating Wolf Tooth for the years of service I’ve had from my Waveform pedal guts, and I’ve replaced the bearings in my Pendulums multiple times. If they aren’t spin-spin-spinning, then when it comes to technical trails I’m not grin-grin-grinning.
But, I enjoy that comfy dropped platform so much that it’s worth the extra attention to keeping them clean, and swapping those oil-filled 7902 bearings while the pedals still spin faster than anything else on the market. Worth it, even in this climate.
Making weird shit is the Outlier approach, and, yes, PPP review policy in place, I think it’s a story worth following.
{Above photo: MEATengines}
Stooge
I have a friend* who was recently dually poo-pooing the “Stooge style” and lamenting that Kona hasn’t ESDed the Unit. Now, I’ll throw in that much of this aesthetic derision comes down to the bi-plane fork crown. I mean, everyone loves the bent top tube of the Dirt Tracker, or paired top tubes of the MK-series, right?
Yeah, so. I had to say that I love that some folks don’t like the look of Stooge-Andy’s post-war Britain-inspired do-it-all double hardtails. Can’t wrap your head around the long-offset forks, the Plus-tire prerequisite, or the combination of current Boost hub spacing and classic 1-1/8″ headtube? That’s okay. The Stooge story is also one of someone chasing their ideal machine and realizing that there must be a few other folks seeking the same situation.
“My name is Andy Stevenson and I’m the person responsible for the mess that is Stooge Cycles. I do everything – designing and prototyping, working with my manufacturers in Taiwan, right down to taping the boxes for dispatch. Stooge was formed in the summer of 2014 with a single frameset, the MK1. This was my idea of the perfect rigid bike and was a response to nothing being available on the market that got me excited enough to buy.“
*{A perfect candidate for a Stridsland Barge frameset, in fact.}
{Above photo: Stooge Cycles}
On a personal note, I love Stooge extra for two reasons. Their aluminum -17° Moto Bar {cut to 780mm} has become my favourite tiller for trail-sailing on a rigid rig and a joy on my Arcturian Voyager as well.
And, more importantly, they’re one of the few brands helping to keep my 29+ dreams alive. My hoard of 29×3″ XR4 tires isn’t going to last forever, but if just enough of us keep looking for tires with travel, hopefully the 50,000:1 Club will remain well-enough supported with 3″ rubber.
Frames, bars, and tire sizes that aren’t for everyone, but are absolutely loved by a fair few folks whose, at least sometimes, choice of suspension design is none of the above. #JerryWillowsHatesMyBike, but even he must love that doing-your-own-thing story?!?
{Above photo: MEATengines}
Rivendell
I’ve often joked about buying a Rivendell frameset and having disc-brake tabs brazed onto it. There’s something doubly contrarian about the idea that appeals and the frames are beautiful. Particularly, I love the Platypus, but for the lack of Roaduno dropouts.
Rivendell didn’t make the coveted {hahaha} 2025 Me Awards list for one of their frames, though. Or even for my weird, in a lovely way, Baggies that keep on keeping on. No, we’re here talking about their Rapid Rise revenant rear derailleur.
{Above photo: RBW}
Riv-bike didn’t just invest in the design, prototyping, and production of their own low-normal, or “Reverse Action” as they call it, rear derailleur, but they were so confident that they’d sell out that they posted them with a note saying “1 Per Customer Please.”
The story:
“Not that it matters, and not a reason to get one, but we’ve been working on this Opposite-Movement (OM) action for more than eight years. That’s how it goes when you’re a company of bicycle riders and not an industry big shot with a staff of specialists for each component. We had one big dead-end, and to make a long story short, instead of giving up, we got Microshift to make it. They looked at our prototypes and listened to the result we wanted, and said, essentially, “We can make it work if we do it our way” and that was proverbial music to our proverbial ears, and to use another cliché, we couldn’t be happier. It came out 99 percent perfect. The missing one percent is entirely theoretical/philosophical, but if we’d insisted on that they might have said, “You know what? Upon further reflection, do it yourselves.”
And look at what’s out there in the real world. Compare it to those.“
{Above photos: Riv Baggies by Hardtail.Life}
If Shimano hadn’t stopped making at least one example of their Rapid Rise rear derailleurs, this product wouldn’t exist. But, at some point, whatever was left of M580, M760, M960, & etc., inventory wasn’t enough to sustain the wrong-way shifting aficionados.
I didn’t buy one, even though my fresh-ish commuter rig will have two derailleurs and thumb shifters, and I loved my previous non-mountain-biking Rapid Rise experiences. That was definitely a case of a product being marketed for the wrong application, where the reversed action is awesome for ATBing. Maybe when Riv has inventory again, I’ll treat myself.
{Above photo: Silver thumb shifter by RBW}
So that’s a wrap on the MEATYs for 2025. New year, new MEATengines and all that.
A big thank you to everyone who supported MEATengines this year. Whether that was submitting a Bicycle Valentine, sharing an article, making a donation, participating over on r/MEATengines, or showing up and reading.
As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or comments, feel encouraged to drop me an e-mail.
Standard Awards Disclaimer
Remember, I regularly ride trails on a rigidly forked one-speed and do not currently own a multi-speed mountain bicycle; therefore, I must know almost nothing about the modern mountain bike experience. Also, I’ve never been to the World Championships for any cycling discipline. These and other shocking revelations will be coming to light in my future tell-all autobiography: ‘Andrew Major – An Older, Fatter, Slightly Shorter, And Much Slower Matt Beer.’