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LittleBig Scoot-to-Pedal Children’s Bike Flips & Grows w/ Your Kid

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LittleBig was created by Irish engineer and round-the-world cyclist Simon Evans. After completing his circumnavigation in 2010, he worked as a shop mechanic, where he was introduced to balance bikes as a first bike for small children. He noticed that children were quickly growing out of these balance bikes, and that parents were soon returning to get larger ones. Evans combined his engineering skills and knowledge of bikes to create a design that is simple but elegant; essentially three bikes in one. Starting as a pedal-less balance bike, it then becomes a larger balance bike that has a higher saddle and longer reach. Finally, with the addition of a crank and some pedals, it becomes a pedal bike, easing children through the transition on one bike.

The LittleBig should keep your kiddo rolling from age 2 to 7, which sure beats buying a new one almost as often as shoes while they’re growing like weeds. It has an aluminum frame that comes in several colors, running €195 as a balance bike, with the pedal and crank attachment running an extra €45.

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Mau
Mau
9 years ago

What a truly brilliant piece of kit. Decent price, will last, looks and, and (from the looks) wont be as ridicolously heavy as other kids bikes

Jim
Jim
9 years ago

Is there a coaster brake on that? Most kids in the lower end of that age group have problems using hand brakes.

Source: taught in the range of 400 children to ride bikes.

Jim
Jim
9 years ago

Addendum: obviously not much of a problem for the scoot phase, mostly curious about the transition.

Turner92
Turner92
9 years ago

Holy cripes the initial cost is expensive.

d
d
9 years ago

as a dad of 4 small boys (currently 7 and under) this sounds great. my guys are great with the hand brake if it is adjusted correctly (most of the kids bikes I checked have awful brakes that require a weird hand position and amazing grip strength to move them) but they have had issues with hoping on bikes with coaster brakes and not being use to it. I love the idea of a hand brake on a run bike. Makes for an easy transition to the next level and riding trail.
As for the price, the initial is hard to swallow, but if you factor a run bike and a pedal bike it is not completely crazy… hopefully grand parents can help 🙂 (or rich aunts and uncles…)

before the trolls get going, this is just my kids, and my experience and you and your kids are all geniuses. Cool?

JBikes
JBikes
9 years ago

Neat. I think handbrakes are learnable for most, culturally we just don’t think so. As ‘d’ mentioned, they need a lot of leverage though, and a proper lever for small hands.

And if not (as Jim says), a coaster would seem possible. It just needs a coaster brake rear hub. It would be a nice option from the factory.

LittleBig Bikes
9 years ago

Hi There. Simon from LittleBig bikes here just wanted to respond to some of the comments. Glad you guys seem to like the LittleBig!

@Mau Yes the bike is light. With the alloy frame, bars, stem, seatpost etc, the total weight for the pedal bike is 7.1kg. This is a little over half the weight of many traditional steel kids bikes we’ve tested which often weigh around 12kg.

@Jim The bike has alloy short reach V brakes which were chosen specially for smaller hands. As coaster brakes only work when the chain is on, there would have been no rear brake when the LittleBig is in balance bike mode. You can see some pics of the brake levers on our features page: https://www.littlebigbikes.com/features/

@turner92 We understand that the initial outlay is higher than some bikes, but it’ll save money in the long run as you won’t need to change bikes regularly. It’s designed to last, we haven’t cut any corners on the specification which is the same high quality you’d find on an adult bike- only little.

@d glad you like the bike. Agreed, we don’t see why you’d put coaster brakes on a kids bike as they’ll likely transition onto a BMX or mountain-bike which come with hand brakes. It’s good to get kids comfortable using hand brakes as early as possible. Coaster brakes are massively heavy too and only seem to have 2 positions, on or off – good for skid competitions though!

John
John
9 years ago

If my 3yr old didn’t already have a balance bike i would buy this, great idea, brilliant execution. I would rather pay a bit more for this than having to buy 2 bikes to get you to the same point.

The best bit is that the head angle is slacker on the small bike so the steering is less nervous, I think this could even be exaggerated further.

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