Recent investigations of off‐yrast low‐spin states of94Mo yielded evidence for one quadrupole phonon and two‐phonon states with mixed proton‐neutron symmetry. The mixed‐symmetry assignments are based on the observation of strongM1 transitions and the measurement of their absoluteM1 matrix elements ≈ 1 &mgr;N. Corresponding structures were identified very recently in theN= 52 neighboring even‐even isotones,96Ru and92Zr, too. Progress on this topic is reviewed. © 2002 American Institute of Physics