The hard rubbers, a new trend in tennis table?

Hello,

I am wondering what is all about with this new trend generated by almost all tennis table equipment vendors to bring hard rubbers to the market.
Examples: MX-P 50, Tenergy 05 Hard, Dignics 09c, Rasanter R53, etc.
Is this a reaction to the new plastic ball? What are the benefits of using these hard rubbers with the new plastic ball?
Are we witnessing the creation of a new style of play?
If this is just a reaction to the Chinese rubbers (Hurricane) why the vendors are doing it right now?

Is this just a marketing stuff? Since a very hard rubber feels dead on a lot of blades and you need to put a lot of power in your stroke to generate the spin which is quite difficult for an amateur because he does not have the proper technique/ physical training/stamina/agility, how all these vendors think that the vast majority of the players will use these hard rubbers?

Indirectly they forces you to use a booster on these rubbers to get a spring/tensor effect but the booster is illegal.



BR

Good point there. Somehow related to your note, here are some of my concerns.
When you start playing table tennis with whatever setup which costs a few dollars, after a while someone will tell you that you need to buy something better and since you do not have knowledge of equipment / a person to guide you and you do not want to spend a lot of money, maybe you get an ALL setup but nothing fancy but still a big improvement compared to your first setup. After a while, maybe a few years, inevitably you will hear about Butterfly for example / tensor rubbers which is a huge step for you compared to what you have experienced so far. By asking more advanced players if you should make the step into the Butterfly world probably most of the players will advise you to stay away from them since they are too reactive/fast/catapult effect/ high throw angle/etc and they are for pro players and everything makes sense for you since you do not have the proper technique yet.
But guess what? You do not have all the pieces of the puzzle at that time so here is another perspective.
Metaphorically speaking, when you have used your first setup, it was like you were taking a walk in the park. With your second setup it was like you were driving a bicycle and in a way you were afraid to drive a VW for example (Tensor rubber) which is indeed more faster than a bicycle but actually some pro players are not even using these rubbers like you will use them – I talk about the fact that you, as a simple amateur probably you will not use an OFF+ blade (all those SUPER Carbon , ZLC, etc) but even if you are going to use them , guess what? The pro players are boosting the rubbers so it is like they are driving a Ferrari and you are definitely not aware of this type of car (boosted, speed glue rubber/ whatever treatment they are applying to their rubbers). So maybe it is time to reconsider what do we call fast rubber because some guys are using fast setups for real (Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron).
The second scenario is related to the original post regarding hard rubbers. Speaking about the guy mentioned in my story who just started to play tennis table, let`s say that after a while he will find out that the setups, even if they look almost the same in terms of size/rubber color/etc beyond the surface they are not quite the same and the rubbers have different hardness / top sheets / thickness /etc. Now our guy is quite in trouble to choose a setup with all these options from many vendors available on the market. Without going into too much detail and with some luck let`s assume that our guy will end up with a setup where he has a medium hard rubber on the forehand and a medium rubber on the backhand (Tenergy 05/05 fx). Probably this setup is very common and it follows the rule where a forehand rubbers needs to be a few degrees harder than the one using on your backhand – assuming you are a forehand looper for example. This makes sense since you cannot generate the same power with your backhand like you are doing with your forehand – (you are not Kreanga) and you are not Xu Xin to jump all over the place so you need a rubber on your backhand to “help you / do part of the job for you” and on forehand you are ok since you are going to use your entire body to generate more power. But with the new trend of the hard rubbers probably some players have started to use them so this shift raises some questions and some of them were mentioned by ZeroTT user. Since these hard rubbers are dead on a lot of blades and you are not Kreanga/Xu Xin and a lot of players are struggling to generate power with the forehand with tensor rubbers how are they going to use them on their backhand where definitely not all of them are just blocking/ pushing for example.On the forehand side probably a hard rubber will help you on receives/placement but since it is quite dead you will get into trouble when you are going to perform a topspin because you need to do all the work and “there is nobody there to do part of the job for you”, not to mention that you do not have the time to get into position most of the time since the ball comes very fast to you so you will end up to perform a block with a dead rubber.