The Original?

Tuned up a bike for a friend today, and was amused to see this:

(Yes, I cleaned the schmutz off the chain and cogs, just not before taking the photo.)

After a hard tandem ride this morning, I'm feeling a little too lazy to get up and dig through my paper-based bike knowledge collection (yes, I know, I'm on the Internet, but I'm even too lazy to open a new browser tab... it was a long ride), but I'm not so sure Shimano can prove that they made "the original bike components." They sure tried on this Tourney-equipped hybrid, though... the rear derailleur mounting bolt also featured the same boast. Who brags on a rear derailleur mounting bolt?

In Shimano's defense, the Tourney derailleurs paired with their Revo twist-shifters tuned up with ease and performed quite nicely. I even like the concept of the MegaRange freewheel shown above (and I'm in good company, since the late, great Sheldon Brown liked them too)... a fairly tight cluster on gears 2-6, with a big pie-plate-sized bailout 34-toother in position 1. Granted, it takes some derailleur engineering shenanigans to make that shift from the corncob to the pie plate, but nobody does derailleur engineering shenanigans as well as Shimano. The Tourney (with some pretty gigantic pulleys) ate up the big shift like nobody's business. Plus, now that these new 1x11 setups with 42-tooth big cogs (and, sheesh, 1x12 with a 50) are all the rage, no one would look askance if you showed up to a ride with this measly little 34.