New Balance Fresh Foam Beacon: what happened, where did it go?

So did I. Great lightweight trainer. A shame New Balance cut it. SMH

That was a great shoe for me as well.

Give the rebel a try, its a little more lightweight, but has a similar feel to the beacon.

Version 1 was an amazing trainer in its day, then it got a bit worse over the next couple generations. It was never an attractive shoe, so that didn't help its mainstream appeal. Then they started going in different directions with their Fresh Foam shoes, which started getting more maximal, and they also started developing their Fuelcell lineup as well. I think it just got forgotten about by consumers, and the sales weren't enough to justify keeping it around.

Wasn't it basically just the 1080 sans outsole rubber?

All shoe companies going towards super shoes foam

NB is epsecially self-destructive, who knows what they're playing at... their Vazee Summit and Summit Unknown were excellent lightweight trail shoes, good for snow, firm enough for most rocks and pliant enough for mixed surface...

So they abandon it, of course, then turn it into squish monstrosity with "Fuel Cell" foam...

as if that's in any way an improvement or appropriate to trail running.

"Fuel Cell" Rebel are trash on the track too btw though ok for recovery or the occasional tempo run.

The one good thing when a brand loses it like this and you can check out others: Asics, to my surprise, is now blowing NB away in almost every category.

I think the two lines converged at some point. The original Beacon was a fairly different shoe than the 1080 available at the time. The 1080 kind of lived in that category with shoes like the Nimbus and Triumph, and the Beacon clearly did not. It was always lower stack and lighter weight, and had a much less structured upper. However after a couple versions, they kind of took on similar traits in the uppers, and as more people trended towards higher cushion shoes, I think the 1080 just kind of swallowed up the Beacon.