Three Sims boards in different colorways? No, the middle one is a Speedent, copied from the Sims ‘New Wave’ team deck from 1981 by Bernie Tostenson. The legit Sims images are from (left) eBay Watch March 2010, and (right) February, 2011.
The Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei turned up some history of Speedent:
‘Charles Yeh, CEO of Speedent Corp, has been exporting Taiwan-made sporting goods world-wide since 1975. The first line that Yeh introduced to the international market was skateboards …’
Considering the original date of this early graphic (1981-1982) and Speedent’s origins in 1975, I’d say that Charles Yeh was a pioneer of crappy bootlegs!
‘Speedent’ sounds more like a brand of toothpaste to me, for sale on eBay.
Editor’s note: Speedent now manufactures and sells a separate brand of skateboards called Yoacher, that even has an American “team” of sort with a guy named Doug Brown. Tom Fain is still listed, although he died in 2011. In the IEAT profile it’s interesting to hear Yeh lament about having to occasionally outsource manufacturing labor from Taiwan to places with lower quality like China and Vietnam.
3 comments
houseofneil
i think they thought it made their shit stuff more authentic. Copers, rails, nose and tail. Like the boards actually work for skating or something.
timmythecop
Why is it that all the fake jobs seem to have copers?
SimonWoodstock
Pretty sick graphic when you think about it.. Rock Okasick and/or Dale Bozzio would be proud..