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. His son is going to take over the successful goggle business. Today this pioneering company is the world’s leading producer of swim goggles.įast forward a few years and the dentist had become older and decided to retire. 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. 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. 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. Except for using the internet and Google for ten minutes, no direct research was involved… The story that follows is partly factual, and is partly made-up of my guesses. 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. I remembered Bugz and recommended them, mildly surprised we still carried them. A medical issue called ‘Steven Johnsons Syndrome’ had made his eyes extra-vulnerable to becoming too dry. Recently, a friend was looking for a great goggle to protect his extra-sensitive eyes. 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. 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. The original Bugz were much nicer, but most motorcycle stores became packed low priced Bugz knock-offs.Īt 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. So much that within a year or two numerous Asian-made cheaper copies were available everywhere. Well as you might have expected, Bugz initially sold like hotcakes. 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.

Bugz were radically lighter, better fitting and draft-free. This was the first all-new thinking about goggles since the earliest days of riding. They were called ‘Bugz’ because you looked a bit like you had bug eyes when you wore them. Back sometime during the mid-nineteen eighties an all-new type of motorcycle goggle was created.

Bugz goggles