The training wheels are off: Shoddy Goods 083
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OK, my kids aren’t that grown-up yet, so it’s always unsettling to realize the ways parenting has changed since I was in the thick of it. I’m Jason Toon, and this Shoddy Goods (the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture) is about the decline and imminent demise of something it seems like we were doing, like, five minutes ago.
The thrill of independence
What does it take for a consumer product to enter language as a universally understood idiom? It’s gotta be ubiquitous: people have to know what the literal thing is before they can understand the metaphorical reference to it. It’s gotta be distinctive: it has to serve a function so unique and specific that no other doo-dad will do. And it’s gotta last at least a little while, because crossing over from the marketplace to the dictionary takes some time.
It’s a rare product that can manage it. But the bicycle giant Huffy introduced one in 1949: training wheels. And even as usage of training wheels themselves is vanishing, the idiomatic usage of “training wheels” just keeps on rolling.
“Non-spill easy riding”
“Convertible side wheels form sturdy 4-wheeler for beginners… Safe non-spill easy riding.” That’s from a catalog listing for the Huffy Convertible, the first bike with training wheels. For those of us who grew up with them as an established fact, the idea of needing to explain training wheels is surprising. Surely they’re so obvious everyone gets it, right?
But the Huffy Convertible was something new. Aiming to attract more kids under the age of 6 to cycling, the Convertible was designed to smooth the way from tricycles to legit bikes, with a chain drive, adjustable-height seat and handlebars, and… balancer wheels? Convertible wheels? Stabilizers? Safety training wheels? The name took a few years to standardize into the familiar form.
Next stop: dragstrip
But training wheels themselves rapidly spread to other Huffy models, then to other companies’ bikes, too. By 1955, there were several Convertible knockoffs in the market with near-identical designs. Training wheels became a standard accessory, included with some new bikes and also sold separately.
So that’s how at least three generations learned to ride a bike. My parents, me, my kids: our first “two-wheeler” bikes were all equipped with training wheels. (Well, my yard-sale special only had one, which I thought was normal at the time.) I feel safe in saying most of the millions of training-wheel riders never really thought twice about whether it was the best way to learn.
“Training wheels are trash”
But someone was thinking about it. In the late 1990s, Rolf Mertens resurrected the “Laufsmachine” (”running machine”), an early bicycle design without pedals, where the seat is low enough for kids to propel themselves with their feet on the ground. His Like-a-Bike brand caught on quickly across Europe, with other balance bike makers joining the market.
The idea is that balance is the hardest part of riding a bike to learn. By starting earlier, in a way that gives kids more control, autonomy, and confidence, they can master balance first and add the relatively trivial skill of pedaling later. That checks out to me: for all the time I spent riding with training wheels, I didn’t really have a feel for how to keep a bike upright until the training wheels came off and it was roll or fall.
The Germans are coming, 2009
By the early 2010’s, the pushbike trend had spread to the United States. I first saw kids riding balance bikes around then, in a part of Seattle full of the kinds of cosmopolitan, nerdy young parents you’d expect to be drawn to all things new, European, and scientific. By then, academic studies were confirming that balance bikes were a more effective and quicker way to teach kids how to ride.
(You know what else is cool and scientific? The Zesty Paws dental bones & supplements for sale today at Meh. Hey, just be thankful I’m not peddling mattresses or Squarespace. Sponsor intrusion over.)
In a thread entitled “Training Wheels are Trash”, Redditor elyesq sums up the current consensus: “If you have a child ready to learn how to ride a bike, the worst thing you can do is put them on a bike with training wheels. Riding with training wheels is very counterintuitive to the skills needed to actually ride a bike.”
There are still plenty of bikes with training wheels out there, but the trend is clear. While kids’ bike sales overall fell by 6% in 2024, balance bike sales were up 3%. Pushbikes are increasingly being adopted by school PE programs. While it may take another generation, the writing is on the wall for training wheels.
Bon Jovi, the IMF, and Skyrim
But the metaphorical sense of “training wheels” is as strong as ever. In print, it first started to be used widely to refer to any kind of early-stage assistance in the 1980s, when the media was staffed by the postwar babies who were the first generation of training-wheel users. The shop had to destroy most of their stock and pay to have the entire building professionally cleaned, raising fears it might have to go out of business altogether. Locals raised AU$14,000 to keep the shop open, but that’s AU$14,000 that could have been used for something else. Whether the donor was just oblivious, or some horrid little shit with a moronic sense of humor, the effect is just as devastating. Don’t be that guy.
That steep upward curve is when the Baby Boomers consolidated power
Since then, “training wheels” has been an indispensable idiom across the English-speaking world. It’s been used to describe everything from the music of Bon Jovi (”rock for beginners, with training wheels,” New York Times, 1989) to IMF financial support for Russia (”the training wheels of Western assistance”, Stuart News, 2001), from the tentative early efforts of a new chef (”With training wheels off, each of the dishes had found its soul”, Toronto Globe & Mail, 2002) to the courage video games gave a teenager to come out (”Video games were the queer training wheels I needed”, SBS Australia, 2019).
Whatever its value to velocipedal pedagogy, “training wheels” is just too useful and efficient a phrase to die out in our lifetimes. I’d bet my pushbike that it will ascend to that even rarer class of metaphors that outlives the public’s first-hand familiarity with what it’s referring to. Like carbon copies, Kodak moments, going through the wringer, and not touching that dial, training wheels will be a part of our conversation long after they’re a part of our childhood.
So much fender for one picture
Do you remember learning how to ride a bike? I definitely remember getting the bike for Christmas, and I remember every crash and skinned knee, but I don’t particularly have any memory of the actual presumably wobbly, slow, uncertain first trips down the sidewalk and eventually on the street. Let’s hear your first bike memories in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.
—Dave (and the rest of Meh)
No helmet or kneepads necessary to ride these past Shoddy Goods stories:
- 13 comments, 3 replies
- Comment
I do! I remember quite clearly and fondly my Dad holding onto the back of the bike seat and pushing on my inaugural ride without training wheels! Being the youngest has its advantages. My brothers, sister, and Mom were cheering me on! Whee!
Training wheels are trash only when they are used improperly. They shouldn’t touch the ground all the time, just when the bike leans too far in one direction, then one wheel keeps you up long enough to correct. If they are always on the ground you aren’t learning squat.
@jcbeckman Correct!
Taught myself how to ride a bike in the driveway of the little old lady that babysat us after school. No training wheels required. Just me and like 5 other kids entertaining ourselves in the yard while “Mrs. Merry” sat inside, smoked cigarettes, and watched TV.
I learned on an old rusty piece of crap one-speed bike that my friend’s mom gave me. Wasn’t until I was 12, my folks never let me learn before that because we lived on a road that was in no way safe for a little kid to ride on. Mom took me to the park with the bike, did the standard “hang on to the back and then quietly let go” thing, and that was that. Got a “real” bike for my 13th birthday, and my best friend and I were never home after that. Oh, the shenanigans those bikes let us get up to… heh.
I have the same vivid, fond memory as therealjrn above. In the street in front of our house, Dad jogging along with me while holding on to the back of the seat, and then feeling giddy as he let go and I kept myself upright.
The next great bike memory was the day Dad replaced the originals on my red Rollfast with the height of early 70’s coolness - high handlebars and a shiny red banana seat!
OH YEAH… I must’ve been 5 years old because I wasn’t in 1st grade yet. I remember my dad holding the back of my seat and running along side of me. I was so proud of myself when he let go! I finally caught up to my big sister, I felt like such a big girl.
My next memory is sitting on the edge of the kitchen sink while I was blubbering like a baby as my mom washed the sand and pebbles out of the open wound on what was left of my big toe.
THAT’S the day I learned not to ride barefoot! 
Fast forward 5 years and I was now on one wheel. I traded training wheels for two poles and tackled the unicycle!
From training wheels to disability scooters, and EVERYTHING in-between, what a fabulous life of FUN TIMES ON WHEELS!
Not a bike, but once when I was a child, we took our scooters to a trail in the park, and there was a bump, and… well… it hurt.
I was a klutz and had training wheels on my bike for far longer than any of my peers. Even when they were eventually taken off, I was constantly having wrecks.
I probably could have learned to ride the bike without the training wheels, but they were on for about a day before I bent them while taking a corner. I could be wrong. That was approximately 67 years ago.
/showme werehatrack riding a training wheels bicycle veering around a corner bending one training wheel up
@therealjrn Here’s the image you requested for “werehatrack riding a training wheels bicycle veering around a corner bending one training wheel up”
I don’t remember learning myself, but I remember my kids learning. For my oldest, someone gave him a bike with training wheels and he hated it. Then someone at REI recommended we take off the training wheels and remove the pedals and have him use it like a stride bike. He did that for about an hour and then asked for the pedals to be put back on and that was it. 2nd kid we got a skuut for him when he was 3 and he dare-deviling down hills on that very quickly. Transitioned to a bike without needing any instruction when he we 4 or 5.
I had a push bike in the late fifties that my grandparents from France brought for me. Passed it down to my sister when it was her turn. Never had training wheels but remember them well on other bikes.
And yes, in my teen years, having a bike meant a tremendous amount of freedom. I can remember doing 25 or 30 mile round trips to go from my house in north St Louis to the Alton locks etc and long country rides out with friends.
It’s always surprising to realize so few kids today understand what the “save” icon represents on their computer/phone. Likewise, the thumb-and-little-finger-to-the-side-of-your-head gesture for making a phone call that dates back to old cradled phone sets may one day be replaced by just a flat palm.
We only had second hand bikes growing up until we each turned 10 when we received a new bike on our birthday. I don’t remember having a bike with training wheels but I do remember riding my oldest sister’s 1955 Schwinn bike with ballon tires and chrome fenders when I was about four years old my legs weren’t long enough for me to sit on the seat and reach the pedals. Since it was a girls bike I was able to pedal while standing up I don’t remember falling and my sister says the same. She still has that bike in her shed, I hate to think of what it looks like now.