Urban Transport

The Magic Wheel: the penny farthing of skateboards?

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The Magic Wheel
The Magic Wheel
The Magic Wheel

April 18, 2008 If you've ever dreamed of sailing down the footpath on a seatless unicycle with no pedals - and lord knows I have - you too will wonder why it took so long for the Magic Wheel to go into production. Thankfully, for ergonomic reasons, they've removed the seat post too.

It must be the increased proliferation of inner-city living; we're being bombarded with a huge range of portable short-range transport options, each hoping to reach the mainstream and replace the Razor scooters all the trendy office workers and art school students zip down the pavement on. We've seen electric skateboards, folding bicycles, pavement snowboards, caster boards, electric scooters... but perhaps only the Thrustpac backpack propeller system comes close to the Magic Wheel on the WTF scale.

It's basically a bicycle wheel with no pedals, a footboard either side, a small rear caster wheel and a plastic casing to stop clothes and dangling appendages from getting stuck in the spokes. One rides it by balancing on one footboard while kicking oneself along with the other foot. From the looks of the wobbly fellow at 1:49 in the promo video, it doesn't seem particularly easy.

In a nod to practicality, the Magic Wheel has a small handle - but this does little to negate the fact that it's slightly larger than a bicycle wheel in size. It's available worldwide for around UKP£80 from the Magic Wheel website.

Loz Blain

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1 comment
TheGiz
I purchased one of these ...now severly discounted for many of the reasons in comments. The concept has merit and its is kinda fun in a unique simplistic way a segway for \"Po Fokes\" LOL. I am a designer and ride, pilot, etc lots of modes of transport including unicycles. Now for the harshness- the ground brake is over kill, retarded, and drags on anything but a very smooth level path. The \"road toad\" skinny tire is another poor design spec choice. The castor angle along with the choice of harware (musta been by a comitee of acountants) lastly the unit is WAY WAY to farging heavy...my entire mountain bike ways less with TWO wheels. High marks to effort and style despite desparaging remarks from the self conscious vanity sheep, sorry yall, but if its fun and useful cool ..you skate board school \"tools\" can shark my posterior if you could out skate me... I will keep mine and rework it to be an off roadable lighter and perhaps a gas drive of hybrid drive...smoke that ...the GIZ