Eurobike 2009: plastic pedals everywhere

If lime green was the colour of the show for road bikes (and pretty much everything else), then plastic was the material of the show for flat pedals. You couldn't move for gaudy platforms in every colour of the rainbow and some others besides. Pretty much everyone who's a player in the urban pedal market had some on display. There were also plenty to be found in the Taiwanese halls too, which, given that fact that we normally see stuff there a year in advance, means there's going to be plenty more of them hitting the mainstream.

These purple units from VP were fairly typical of the trend: a polycarbonate body (in a fairly standard platform shape) wrapped round a standard steel axle. You can have any colour you like, so long as it isn't black.

Now we're not against the reintroduction of colour into the urban scene (although it would seem that Cannondale are...) but there's surely going to be longevity issues here. Pedals get abused, and though Polycarbonate is stronger than resin we reckon you wouldn't have to ground your fixed gear many times to end the life of a see-through unit like this one. Nice though they are.

Elsewhere platform pedals were erring on the side of minimal, with manufacturers trying to out-CNC each other. Some of the neatest we saw were these cruciform ones from Wellgo offshoot Xpedo.

Most beautiful pedals for the beautiful people, though, were these toeclip-ready single sided units from White Industries. Milled from a single billet of Aluminium and with the axle fully visible under the platform, they were a real thing of joy. Now to source some original leather and steel strap reproductions...