What happens to a lot of the things that appear in Fresh Goods? I guess many of the bits are little more than free advertising but what about the bikes and the like? Outside of grouptests I always imagined that was what the grinder was for, but looking back some big things disappeared without trace.

I’m specifically thinking of the Banshee Phantom that was in fresh goods December 2014, but there are others that have occurred to me over the last year of so. Apparently “Dan’s looking forward to giving it some beans around Calderdale” but we never heard back.

So what does happen to the reports of all of these toys that get played with? I would have thought that the distributors who send them get a bit annoyed that they go to all that effort and don’t even get a bad review!

Perhaps the reviews were bad and so not published to avoid distributor blushes?

they all got washed into the north sea on boxing day.

I’d like to think STW have more integrity than that!

Never occurred to me before, but now you mention it.

I’ve always assumed that the bikes either come with a rep to the office and leave with the rep or are returned after a period and may or may not appear in an article dependant on whether they choose to make a greater article of it / include it in a group test / come to some sort of agreement with them ie long term test.

lesser stuff I would assume are freebies / spoils of the trade, most stuff is probably cheaper to give a sample rather than advertise and there’s probably many more hits on fresh goods than a single website advert.

If the STW staff are like me, memory and available time falls short of my overly keen intentions.

It’s all flogged to pay for Barney’s Barbie doll habit. As we speak his finger is twitching on an ebay for a rare 1979 coke-habit Ken

True story.

Would be nice if they bothered to say something at the time though. I’ve been waiting every issue to read their opinions on the phantom and every issue has left me disappointed as a result. In the end I had to buy one myself to see what it was like. Luckily it is awesome.

Maybe FGF could be split into “stuff we will talk about in the future” and “fleeting eye candy that we will tease you with but never show again”.

Or maybe a vote function for subscribers/premier folk so that we, the paying audience, get to choose what non-grouptest stuff gets reviewed for the mag. I like that idea.

Hell, if they are that short of literate testers I’b be more than happy to lend a hand. Certainly happy to test out cycling waterproofs at the moment if needed.

Wideopen had the Banshee Phantom after Singletrack – I had a go and it didn’t seem like it had been tested that hard! Was a really nice bike though. http://wideopenmag.co.uk/2015/04/long-term-test-our-29-banshee-phantom-review

The bikes are generally lent by the rep for a month or so before they’re passed on to either another mag or a shop for test rides. Most of the other, cheaper stuff is left for the mags to do what they want with. Knowing someone in the review trade has been a good source of helmets for me – they can’t be passed around due to h&s etc.

There are several bikes on my ‘Write review as soon as I get five minutes spare’ pile – though fortunately the Banshee isn’t one of them.

I think that what happened* with this one is that young Dan had it in early 2015, but left the mag in March before he’d written the review. They needed the bike back, understandably, so we had to send it back to them untested with our apologies.

If you spot any others though, they’re probably on my list. 🙂

* I may be wrong

Cheers, Chipps. Maybe not the answer I wanted but at least it is an answer! Thanks for being open about it.

Where else would you get this kind of personal service on the forum?