It’s a fad that’s grown into a lifestyle…

Traveling across the country in their van, the Pepsi-Cola skateboard team prepares to visit another city and show them what skateboarding is all about. Careening down the concrete; dodging in and out of man-made obstacles; letting it all hang out; pushing it tot the edge and back again… that’s skateboarding! It’s a fad that’s grown into a lifestyle for millions of young people nationwide. Pepsi-Cola has been instrumental in skateboarding’s growth, as their team of professionals have introduced skateboarding at cities everywhere across the United States.

Well, how could I refuse this, even if it did come from an eBay auction put up by a member with the dubious name of “boneite?” Best part was, he turned out to be an S&A reader by the name of Tom, who also lives in Portland. Concretin Nik, this one is for you. 10 pictures of the Revell Models Pepsi Skateboard Van from 1979.

Here’s the box. The whole thing came with the shrink wrap opened, but otherwise unmolested and unassembled. Tom found it at thrift store somewhere and paid a couple bucks for it.

“Molded in 2 colors. No painting!” Except that they show three colors on the box. There are no blue parts inside.

Here’s where the great copy comes from.

The decal sheet. I thought long and hard about whether to assemble this thing. My concern wasn’t about “keeping it mint” because I could care less. I was just recalling all the failures in my youth whenever it came to applying decals to models. I never got them right, and as a result models always looked like they had been painted during an earthquake. On top of that, this decal sheet was 30 years old, so I didn’t know if they would adhere or just disintegrate. I decided to do a test with a small scrap, and to my surprise, it worked. So I went for it.

I thought i did a pretty good job, no obvious glaring mistakes, until I got out the fisheye lens for some close ups, and every error became magnified. Still, I’m glad I put the decals on. It’s much more fun to look at this way. Yes, I laid on my stomach in the middle of my street to get this shot.