Sears Yellow Jacket or ????
- Thread starter Mambo308
- Start date
This is the only catalog shot I have of it, sorry its small and blurry. I have it listed as a 1979 catalog, the next year they used forks with integral handlebars not bolt on ones.
These bikes were made by Manco for sears, your tag indicates its the Sears 3hp standard minibike and the bigger full suspended one was the Deluxe. the 391 number is the manufacture number that sears used for manco products sold exclusively through them.
The bike itself was also sold as a yellow jacket and a Streaker, They May have used the yellow jacket name on the sears bike but I am not 100%' from what I gather yellow jacket was a name that Manco did in fact use, and may even be a company/brand that they acquired as they had karts under that name as well (never dug too far into it but there was a yellow jacket company at one time and manco was sucking up bikes etc from companies going out as they went through the years)
Hers is a shot of a yellow jacket I have saved that is fairly OG still (note the decal on the chainguard, plastic yellow front fender is still correct for it) it does appear to have the riveted on tag, but that was the best shot of the bike that was posted either for sale on in a thread years ago.
Here is a link to a thread of same bike sold as a Manco Streaker that I bought and messed with years ago:
manco streaker redo thread
It was truly 100% original when I bought it, just left to die right after it was bought brand new becuase the little girl fell on it and refused to ride it after that. but it has some close ups of the bike. They used an H30 3hp Tecumseh engine.
These bikes were made by Manco for sears, your tag indicates its the Sears 3hp standard minibike and the bigger full suspended one was the Deluxe. the 391 number is the manufacture number that sears used for manco products sold exclusively through them.
The bike itself was also sold as a yellow jacket and a Streaker, They May have used the yellow jacket name on the sears bike but I am not 100%' from what I gather yellow jacket was a name that Manco did in fact use, and may even be a company/brand that they acquired as they had karts under that name as well (never dug too far into it but there was a yellow jacket company at one time and manco was sucking up bikes etc from companies going out as they went through the years)
Hers is a shot of a yellow jacket I have saved that is fairly OG still (note the decal on the chainguard, plastic yellow front fender is still correct for it) it does appear to have the riveted on tag, but that was the best shot of the bike that was posted either for sale on in a thread years ago.
Here is a link to a thread of same bike sold as a Manco Streaker that I bought and messed with years ago:
manco streaker redo thread
It was truly 100% original when I bought it, just left to die right after it was bought brand new becuase the little girl fell on it and refused to ride it after that. but it has some close ups of the bike. They used an H30 3hp Tecumseh engine.
Thats good to know that is was the actual name used on the sears bike and decal on the the one I had saved from the web was used on them. It also means they used the name on both the fixed and removable bar versions. They had a full suspension version in this frame size available as well with a suspended seat and spring loaded forks.
I also see that the bigger bike is called an orange flash.......still no fabled "puddle jumper" name in print anywhere
still no fabled "puddle jumper" name in print anywhere
I saw Puddle Jumper used in searches more for the swingarm "Orange Flash" model but then it gets blurred because of all the OldMiniBikes.com searches for IDing these models popping up in Google searches. One of the 1979 catalog editions had B&W pictures but no names at all in the descriptions for these.
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I agree, I still think what I had said years ago that someone just came onto one of these sites and said this is my "Puddle Jumper" and it stuck. I would have a hard time thinking that someone over in legal at Sears corporate offices would be OK with putting that name on an already sketchy built item for kids in the time of evil Knievel being one of the biggest stars
