Frog 78
The Frog 78 is in short supply at the moment with the Frog Website stating that more stock is expected in spring 2022
The Frog 78 is the largest of Frog’s three 26″ wheel bikes, and is an all round bike suitable for children (or smaller adults!) with a minimum inside leg of 78cm.
Frog’s guidelines say this is typically children aged between 13 and 16 years of age, but by this age kids vary in height so much we advice you measure your child carefully and use the inside leg rather than the age guideline.
If this bike is too big, then the Frog 73 is it’s smaller sibling and needs an inside leg of 73cm. If your child is too small for this bike you’re out of luck and need to start hunting down adult bikes!
The Frog 78 is a good all round bike which will be happy on most terrains so ideal for youngsters who ride anywhere and aren’t specializing in any one particular kind of cycling.
It has an 8 speed Shimano gear system operated by thumb shifters and having an 11-32T cassette, which should get up all but the steepest hills.
The handlebars can be adjusted within a 54mm range and there’s a quick release seat post that makes adjusting the saddle height easy to do. Your kid should hopefully therefore get a decent amount of time on this bike, but some kids do grow very rapidly at this age.
It’s comforting therefore to know the Frog Bikes really hold their value, so if you keep it well maintained you should be able to sell it on to fund the next bike.
The larger Frog bikes have (thankfully) lost the childish branding of the smaller bikes – no more Frogs splatted all over the frame! This means the Frog 78 should appeal to an older audience.
However kids can be very image conscious at this stage, so you may find an older child / teen starts to outgrow this brand and starts gravitating to a more “adult” brand. If you can avoid this discussion do, as they’d be missing out on the top end of a great range of kids bikes!
In 2020 Frog launched a range of kids bikes with the Tour de France, with these yellow branded bikes being more expensive than the standard colour schemes.
We haven’t reviewed the 26″ wheel Frog hybrids, but we have reviewed three other geared Frog Bikes so are happy to recommend this bike to you.
You can read our geared Frog Bike reviews here:
- Frog 55 review – a smaller version of the Frog 78, with 20″ wheels
- Frog MTB 69 review – the smaller of their two 26″ wheel mountain bikes
- Frog Road 67 review – a 24″ wheel road bike
