Pee Wee's Playhouse Scooter and Helmet

[nick daring]

Hell yessssssssssssss!!! I didn't even think about reaching out to the crew. So so so cool.

 

[MaxPower89]

I miss Pee-wee. Makes me cry seeing his name misspelled so many times over the course of reading this thread. Big P little w. He even joked during the commentary how the production department misspelled it on the bike flyers in Big Adventure. RIP Pee-wee.

 

[TheJoeyB]

Ok, so I heard back from Greg Harrison. He sent me some photos, although for the most part I don't think they appreciably better than the reference photos that are already on this thread. There is one that gives a clearer shot of the head tube badge of any so far and was enough to confirm that it was based on a Mongoose kick scooter like Nick Daring thought.

The Pee Wee's scooter was built on an existing scooter that I was fortunate to find on Canal Street in NYC in 1986. Then I started customizing. It had a wider base and bigger wheels than the kickboard scooters popular now. The original scooter actually had the wooden frame you see that's flat in the middle and rises in the front and the back. In the 3rd picture you can see there's a slot in the floorboard. That slot originally had a brake pedal that connected to the back wheel. The 3rd picture also shows the rig we attached to the front of the scooter that was used to pull Pee Wee and the scooter forward for the first part of his exit scene in each episode.

I questioned him about the brake pedal, as I couldn't find any Mongoose BMX style scooters that had a foot operated brake rather than a handlebar brake lever. I sent him pics of a Mongoose Miniscoot to get his take on it being the base for the build.

Yes, it looks like you've found the scooter base I built Pee Wee's scooter on. The "Mongoose" logo looks familiar.

I'm wrong about the original scooter having a foot brake. The rounded slot cut in the part of the floorboard that rises in the back was to make space for the back wheel. I've attached another photo here of Pee Wee on the scooter where you can see that when you look behind his white shoes.

That photo helped me remember that I built a wider and taller floorboard on the original scooter floorboard and because it was taller in the back I had to cut a space for the back wheel to poke through.

The tall gooseneck stem was fabricated from metal conduit and I fit a full size set of hi-rise bike handle bars on the top by attaching the handle bar stem to the gooseneck with a bolt.

He believes he still has some more reference that he'll send me if/when he locates it.

That still leaves a LOT of questions, but gives us a confirmed place to start. I don't want to overwhelm him with a lot of questions at once, but hopefully he'll be able to give me a little more information about the body on the scooter and whether or not it was completely custom fabrication or he used something existing. Let me know if any of you have any questions you'd like me to pose to him.

Joe