Back sometime during the mid-nineteen eighties an all-new type of motorcycle goggle was created. They were called ‘Bugz’ because you looked a bit like you had bug eyes when you wore them. This was the first all-new thinking about goggles since the earliest days of riding. Bugz were radically lighter, better fitting and draft-free. Before Bugz, riders had a choice between ski-type goggles or old-fashioned World War One-ish metal-framed aviation style goggles with dangerous glass lenses.
Well as you might have expected, Bugz initially sold like hotcakes. So much that within a year or two numerous Asian-made cheaper copies were available everywhere. The original Bugz were much nicer, but most motorcycle stores became packed low priced Bugz knock-offs.
At about the same time as store shelves were loaded with inferior copies, open-face ‘jet’ style goggle-compatible helmets pretty much stopped selling, except to a few sunglass-wearing older riders with windshield-equipped bikes like Gold Wings. Everyone else on more sporting rides had switched to full-face or modular helmet styles, partly because these types now all came with hardened Lexan clear-as-glass face shields. Earlier full-face helmet shields were soft plastic that quickly became scratched and cloudy simply cleaning off the shattered exoskeletons of road-killed insects, so the market for street-riding goggles disappeared almost overnight.
Recently, a friend was looking for a great goggle to protect his extra-sensitive eyes. A medical issue called ‘Steven Johnsons Syndrome’ had made his eyes extra-vulnerable to becoming too dry. I remembered Bugz and recommended them, mildly surprised we still carried them. He tried a pair and was thrilled.
How did we happen to still be inventorying Bugz? Hadn’t they gone out of business a couple of decades ago? I needed to investigate further. The story that follows is partly factual, and is partly made-up of my guesses. Except for using the internet and Google for ten minutes, no direct research was involved…
Once upon a time there was a dentist who loved swimming a lot more than being a dentist, and he wanted to create and manufacture a better swim goggle. He was so passionate about this he persuaded some of his dental patients to allow him to make plaster casts of their face around their eyes. Then, using this unique library of face-casts he worked with a Japanese precision plastic molding company to create a better fitting and more comfortable swim goggle. Today this pioneering company is the world’s leading producer of swim goggles.
Fast forward a few years and the dentist had become older and decided to retire. His son is going to take over the successful goggle business. The now-in-charge son notices the ‘motorcycle boom’ of the 1990’s and maybe he also is a rider (?), so he decides to apply the same innovative design ideas and precision manufacturing qualities that went into the swim goggles to the field of motorcycle rider goggles. A ‘sure thing’, right?
Many prototypes later Bugz goggles are introduced and motorcycle goggles are revolutionized. Except the son’s timing is terrible: a collapsing street motorcycle goggle market quickly fills with cheap copies just as riders-in-general stop wearing goggle-compatible open face helmets. So not such a sure thing...the Bugz party was over almost before it got started.
Except they are still available, still great, and still made perfectly and with great precision. Many of today’s urban riders have re-discovered the pleasures of wearing open-face helmets, but are unaware of the wonderfully superior Bugz goggles. Well, here they are...
