Mountain Biking - What happen to Mongoose?

In 1998 I was purchased a Mongoose NX 7.1. At the time, I was not familiar with mountains bikes as I had previously only owned a low end Specialized. Soon after I bought the bike, people began telling me I could have bought a Mongoose at X-Mart. I was flabbergasted that I had paid $600 for a bike that people perceived as an X-Mart bike. I have now had the bike for 6 years and have never had any problems with it, although I have upgraded several comps.

All the late 90's reviews I have read give Mongoose high marks, but of course now they are no better than a Huffy. Where did Mongoose go wrong?

Mongoose were bought out by Pacific Cycles (I think) and became really bad. However there were some good DH bikes in the late 90's and maybe 2000, like the NX DH and things like that. Now they are bringing out a bike called the balckdiamond which looks as though it could be a good bike. I also just bought a new bike, yesterday, which is a Mongoose DH. It however is not a normal Mongoose as there were only meant to be 2 ever made for Mongoose sponsored DHers in Australia, but they made 18 (or about that) for the Australian public.

If you want to see my bike, Clicky here (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=72650)

Were they bought out? I'm not sure. I think Pacific Cycle licenses names like Mongoose and Eddie Bauer and sells low end Target/Wal-Mart/K-Mart bikes. If you go to Pacific Cycle's (http://www.pacific-cycle.com/brands/) web page, you can see that they have a lot of names for their bikes, but they are all about the same level of quality.

I see Schwinn, Mongoose, GT, Dyno, Murray, etc.

A mate of mine has a Mongoose NX7.3. It is a nice frame/bike plus he built it up with some trick bits to boot.

As of a couple of years ago I wouldn't have pissed on one (unless I peed petrol), but the current crop look a bit closer to the mark. The old D'hillers were nice too.

Now mongoose is trying to cut corners to cut prices to get department stores buy.