New Planet-X Atomic – recycled Nukeproof Reactor…..

Had an email from P-X about their “new” 150mm trail bike, the Atomic.

Looks remarkably like a Nukeproof Reactor and the geo is only different by 1-2mm from what I can see….

Atomic:

Nukeproof Reactor:

Interesting that there’s only 50 Atomics available – wonder if that’s the amount of raw/spare frames they managed to bag?

Ironically named too like they did with the “spare” Sick bikes.

50 would be a min order. They’re just using the mould from the same factory most likely.

Wonder how it work with Mike Ashley holding all the rights?

Could these be the ’25 model ? I noticed a couple of pre-production samples going for sale in the CRC eBay store fire sale.

It’s yellow, called atomic and the web page has a nuclear explosion in the background.

very clever, now if they could do a really affordable giga…

The very same bike (even the paintjob). They are very good but suffer from the Seat post length being a size too big and out of sync with the rest of the geo.

(IE the Large with the 475mm reach should have the 420mm BB-ST height of the Medium).

Good buy if you have freakishly long legs/an aversion to proper size dropper posts.

It’ll be £1999 before long.

It’s yellow, called atomic and the web page has a nuclear explosion in the background.

And they’ve put a radiation sign next to the bike name in the menu drop down 😀

They’re just using the mould from the same factory most likely.

Looks like aluminium frame, but I assume they can buy a slightly tweaked (more frame travel) design using the same parts and tube shaping from the same factory – and avoid IP issues.

 but suffer from the Seat post length being a size too big and out of sync with the rest of the geo

Yeah, them choosing this bike to clone suggests they’re not really MTBers. It was the most out of date NP frame.

There is quite a few ex-NP employees riding around still on what the ‘new’ Reactor was due to launch.

I imagine this is the factory trying to recover some of the losses they would have been hit for.

50 would be a min order. They’re just using the mould from the same factory most likely.

Those faux welds might be difficult to release from the mould ;p

But yea, definitely looks like a copy and paste job of the alloy version.

They are very good but suffer from the Seat post length being a size too big and out of sync with the rest of the geo.

(IE the Large with the 475mm reach should have the 420mm BB-ST height of the Medium).

I get that I could just run more seatpost and aside from frame strength there probably isn’t much of a downside to shrinking the triangles.  But I can’t be the only person who doesn’t get along with super long droppers?

Even with my stubby little legs (6ft, but wear 30″ jeans / 32″ trousers) I’d be running a 150-160mm dropper on the large. and actually found 170mm uncomfortable as dropping the saddle fully with the pedals level puts your back leg in a weak position to try and stand up again, and inevitably you can’t push the front pedal because you’re rolling down a slope picking up speed so there’s no resistance, and you can’t put your front foot round to 6 o’clock as that would fold your back leg even further. It’s like trying to do a split-squat on a wobble board.

It’s a minor thing but my other bike has a 150mm dropper and I notice, that I don’t notice it. I just have to bounce on it till it bottoms out and carry on. The 170mm version needs thinking about and I think I just got used to dropping it with one foot at 6 o’clock which in itself is a bad habit.

ex-NP employees riding around still on what the ‘new’ Reactor was due to launch.

Would expect Mike Ashley to progress with the new design if it was ready to roll, thought they had already been ordering new Megas – or did I imagine that?

Looks like aluminium frame, but I assume they can buy a slightly tweaked (more frame travel) design using the same parts and tube shaping from the same factory – and avoid IP issues.

There’s no IP on geometry and unlikely on the parts and fixtures etc so if the tooling wasn’t owned by CRC then there’s nothing really to stop someone else buying (or modifying them if they cba), not of the sort IP that PX or Sports Direct owners would be concerned about anyway.

afaik the frames came from a company in Taiwan who make frames and assemble full bikes, they’ve been burned by a few insolvencies recently so I expect they’d be keen to sell the frames to anyone who was interested.

Would expect Mike Ashley to progress with the new design if it was ready to roll, thought they had already been ordering new Megas – or did I imagine that?

mind that all the design team were let go. According to shop guy in Evans the other day they’ve been trying to rebuild the design side so that they can bring the brands back to life properly. I’m taking that with a sizeable pinch of salt though

It’s not like NP made their own bikes and some of them were just catalogue frames with their branding. If they sell well then you can be sure that PX will be buying more of them

Not much detail on components – drop 2.5G on a bike & we won’t tell what any of the components are.

Looks remarkably like a Nukeproof Reactor and the geo is only different by 1-2mm from what I can see….

I’d be willing to bet its not actually 1-2mm different… they’ll be identical.

 If they sell well then you can be sure that PX will be buying more of them

Back when I bought my Scandal I spoke to Dave when I collected it and he said they weren’t doing any more FS bikes because it was never a financial success.  Geometry and standards churned over at such a rate that by the time the 1st Codeine landed they were already outdated (they were selling them for ages for about £100 more than the Cane Creek shock’s RRP) and struggled to sell. And people spending FS bike money wanted the latest and greatest all the time (and apparently a bigger brand name), no amount of discounting shifted them. Whereas simple hardtails and gravel bikes massively outsold them and the same models could be used year after year as changes were slower so there was a better return on the R&D investment.

But that’s now two or three ownerships ago, wasn’t there a management takeover, then a staff takeover, then a bankruptcy?

dc1988Full Member
It’s not like NP made their own bikes and some of them were just catalogue frames with their branding

Which ones were catalogue? I believe all the FS NPs and Vitus bikes were in house designs. Don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the hardtails (or gravel or road) with different branding.

The Vitus rapide looked to have an open mould front triangle with a tweaked chainstay and rocker.

afaik the frames came from a company in Taiwan who make frames and assemble full bikes, they’ve been burned by a few insolvencies recently so I expect they’d be keen to sell the frames to anyone who was interested.

There’ll be a factory sitting with a huge stash of Nukeproof-branded frames that were made but not paid for.

I’d be willing to bet its not actually 1-2mm different… they’ll be identical.

That was the case with my Planet X (Titus-branded) Mutsu: a mm difference here or there compared to the identical-lookiing Sonder Broken Road Ti. Struggle to believe they didn’t come from the same factory.

Full spec on the product page: https://planetx.co.uk/products/on-one-atomic-gx-full-suspension-mountain-bike

Standard PX shaped build kit – GX mech with NX cassette on HG hub, G2R brakes, Lyrik Select.

This also looks familiar https://planetx.co.uk/products/on-one-gamma-frame

This also looks familiar https://planetx.co.uk/products/on-one-gamma-frame

Could be a bargain but I can’t get my head around a) the frame vs decal colour combo or b) the On-One branding. The logo just looks so crap. Are Nukeproof decals still available? 😉

Reckon they’ll put the right shock length in it when you actually buy one?

(Planet X doing Planet X things….)

Actually the more I look, the more that appears to be a terrible photoshop…. By a Photoshopper who knows not what they are looking at!

Good move by O-O I reckon. The NP frames were well regarded in the main and and itd be a shame to see them die out completely as I’m not convinced Sportsdirect will keep them going once the stock is cleared out. Also felt the O-O lineup was a bit stale especially with no FS options

@snotrag think you’re right – the perspective on the shock (and the piston size) is all wrong. So a shock shopped into a frame hanging with no shock would make sense.

Oh FFS……

Wonder if they’ve paid Ashley for a license, vaguely remember him saying about if someone wanted to produce under license etc.

Wonder if they’ve paid Ashley for a license, vaguely remember him saying about if someone wanted to produce under license etc.

Fraser Group (Ashley and Chums) mostly appear to be interested in ‘Brands‘ from what I can see, which is just the logo on a downtube or the front of a T-shirt. I actually went into my local Evans the other week just for a browse.

You can buy Rapha, Endura or DHB Jerseys in there, you can buy a random assortment of 5-10, Shimano, Specialized or Muddy fox shoes, you can buy a Specialized, Trek, Cannondale or pinnacle road/gravel bike. But the pinnacle frames look to be the same designs as they were back in 2018 (when FG bought them) and aren’t specced above Sora level components, to me that says a lot about how much FG values the brands they buy up; they’re just logos to put on ‘stuff‘ the “in-house” brands are clearly reserved for inferior products, but they’re also the cheaper…

I expect Fraser Group just had no interest in NP frames that were on order, but not yet delivered when Chiggle went pop. So this is just a manufacturer clearing unwanted stock via PX (just like happened with Sick bikes remember?). I suppose the ‘IP’ for the frame design is maybe a sticking point, who owns the moulds? Who owns the frame designs? and do FG really want to have a fight over a handful of frames without their logos or any related liability for them that may or may not be making use of IP from a company they bought without any real interest in further development of the products.

A change of decals and some tongue in cheek marketing might make for a nice little Xmas earner, but I would be surprised if PX/OO order more frames in the new year. Didn’t PX/OO get out of the FS game a while back despite the Codeine being reasonably popular?

I’m guessing the margins just aren’t there with ‘cheap‘ FS bikes. Plus it’s a stuffed market that moves on quite quickly, fashions etc (noting the comments above about the apparently dated Geometry)…

Ultimately I don’t know if it’s worth getting too excited about some stock clearance frames, this is just another little death throw from the Chiggle Empire.

I suppose the ‘IP’ for the frame design is maybe a sticking point, who owns the moulds? Who owns the frame designs?

You can own a mold but these are welded Al tubes so unless CRC paid for tooling for a specific Alu tube shape they didn’t own them. Often a manufacturer covers tooling fees for a certain volume of frames/bikes anyway and in that case the manufacturer owns the tooling. There’s no IP on a frame unless you have something that you can call a trademark like a GT Triple Triangle (maybe a bad example since was well used long before GT started out in bikes) or can get a patent on the suspension design itself.

Frasers Group now own the Nukeproof brand and trademarks and any IP CRC had too but outside of any patents they might have (unlikely wadr) had I can’t see the look and geometry details of the frames coming under all that.

Plus it’s a stuffed market that moves on quite quickly, fashions etc (noting the comments above about the apparently dated Geometry)…

I think MTB geometry has largely stabilised now, so PX could quite easily get back into FS bikes without getting outdated so quickly as last time.

But the Reactor was a bit outdated anyway, so it’s a poor choice to “clone” like this. The Mega is a much better choice, with still pretty much current geo.

If they were already built and sat in a factory in Taiwan and PX have snapped them up cheap, then that would explain everything.

420mm seat tube sounds ideal to me. I’d just run that with a 200mm dropper and my little 81.3cm/32” legs would be fine. That’s what my hardtail has and it’s great for my 181cm/5’11 body. It gets the saddle dropped out the way for bombing downhill and jumping.

Can we at least call these “reprocessed” instead of recycled?

Looks like they’ve bought Mega frames without shock then photoshopped a shock over the plastic spacer they put on to keep it stable, wonder what shock they’ll actually put on them, super deluxe ultimate or the cheaper select, also wonder if the bearings will be Enduro max like the Mega. Details are a bit sparse, like wheel size for example.
Edit, Just had a re look,they’ll be the cheap select shock.

I’m hoping PX start doing Horizon SPD pedals, or at least the spares for them.

teethgrinderFull Member
I’m hoping PX start doing Horizon SPD pedals, or at least the spares for them.

id look towards Ascend Components for that one. They’ve already brought back the cheap droppers and loads of NP (frame) spares. They’ve also shown photos of flat pedals, saddles, etc recently. All looking very much like the old NP items

https://ascendcomponents.com/

id look towards Ascend Components for that one. They’ve already brought back the cheap droppers

Cheers, I don’t need a dropper but their £120 post looks to have a nice low stack height for about half the price of a OneUp.