Please, Minoura, give us our rollers back ...
An open letter to Minoura Japan
I have two sets, the VIS has heaps, the AIS, NSWIS, Cycing Vic and WAIS all own dozens of them. Hilton owns at least 4 sets, of the Minoura Action roller. Why these rollers in particular? They're not perfect, they have aluminium roller drums with 105mm diameter, which is good, but nasty plastic endcaps that fail with heavy use. The big plus for us is the way they fold up into a small space and they have a reliable, simple bag to transport them. I get to carry them around a lot, and the bag, and the trifoldability, is a BIG win. This is why just about every state track team has heaps of them. 105mm metal roller drums and great transportability. Got it?
Not that long ago they got discontinued. Why? I don't know, the replacement is the Moz roller, same trifold frame, but smaller 80mm plastic roller drums (BAD!) and a fancier bag that has a zip instead of a flap. This is bound to fail in our use-case. We move lots of these rollers (Hilts' van may have a floor lined with 16 sets of rollers when we travel to championships etc) and anything with a zipper is bound to fail.
So, Minoura, please re-release the Action rollers. If you want to make them better, replace the plastic roller endcaps with something more robust, but otherwise LEAVE THEM ALONE!