From the brand you can trust for all your creepy, electronic cockroach needs, Hexbug brings you Tony Hawk’s Circuit Boards. It’s a hybrid of fingerboards and RC skateboard technology that sounds like a bad idea, but looks kind of cool in the demo videos. The promo footage shows some cool maneuvering, however it’s speculation whether this is due to hours of practice and precise timing or some built in mechanism or inherent design that makes lip tricks and kick turns on such a small scale seemingly easy. It comes with a TV commercial featuring Tony Hawk in one of his least wooden advertising appearances ever. Radio controlled Circuit Boards! Get it? Get it?
Listen to Tony’s narration. He sounds really excited, like he can’t believe he’s still able to sign these deals in the year 2014.
“Introducing new Circuit Boards, the worlds most advanced robotic skateboards that let you skate like me, Tony Hawk!”
Is there more than one robotic skateboard? It’s kind of amusing considering he used to catch flak for skating like a robot. Now at long last, he’s getting his due.
This setup will set you back $50, which seems a little extreme!™.
Special effects added. Don’t try this at home.
Check out this edger! You have to wonder how many takes this required. Which brings to mind an important question: Who will be the first guy to pull a frontside air? Who will be the Tony Alva of RC finger boarding? Whoever it is, some guys in Florida won’t get the credit.
This is going to be a heel flip over the channel. Old man Tony still has it!
Is it just me, or does Tony look a little artificially young in this shot? Is he getting the Cybill Shepard soft focus treatment?
The “Power Axle” is the drive mechanism. Some sets come with it, some sets that come with decks don’t, instead including an extra set of back trucks to install. Who wants to place a bet on whether these are interchangeable with Tech Decks?
Look at the size of the remote, definitely not made for adult hands. The batteries and electronics at the back of the deck seem like they have a lot to do with helping the board maneuver on the coping.
Here are a few of your prefab ramp options. I thought maybe there was a magnet of some sort at the lip that might help keep these boards in the ramp, but these photos would suggest otherwise.
Slalom starter ramp?
Reminiscent of the old Firestone plexiglass ramps.
Looks like Tony threw his buddy Kevin Staab a bone.
No toy photo shoot is complete without some weird looking kids.
Again, Power Axle sold separately… so these are just fingerboards. They don’t actually seem to sell the Power Axle as a separate unit. From current offerings it looks like you have to buy that as part of a larger set.
At $5, the price is even comparable to a Tech Deck.
Technical details of the turbo boost.
The layout of this “Ultimate Skate Park” suggests they did not use a design/build firm.
Skate Everything!
Just a reminder, Skate and Annoy does not (in any circumstances) condone punching little kids in the face.
11 comments
Edward
How do you was it up from power save mode
Matt
They don’t work too well with tech deck Ramps. Not enough traction and the transitions are a bit too tight…
Rosie
Apologies for typo-silly phone!
Rosie
Quick question – does anyone know if they work on regular tech deck ramps? My son has enough ramps as it is and don’t want to buy the specific Ramos for these if it will work on the ramps he already has.Thanks
Christiandeath@yahoo.com
Now if tony could just explain why the schematics of the underside if the circuit board clearly resembles dick n balls
Matt
One last comment… I left feedback about our experience with the defective CircuitBoards on their Facebook page. They reached out to me today in order to try and make our experience with their brand a positive one. Everything else aside, I appreciate that they want to stand by their product.
Also, I’m psyched that Tony “threw his buddy Kevin Staab a bone.” I was a big fan of Staab’s in the 80’s. I got to meet him when the Birdhouse tour stopped in St. Louis last month. He was super friendly and fun to chat with. I was happy to purchase Staab’s CircuitBoard deck… hoping that he gets a more than a couple cents of a royalty off my purchase. Haha 🙂
Matt
Sort of tricky, but a lot of fun… They drive like tanks, where you control each wheel independently. You push both buttons to go forward, let up on one to turn. Or make the wheels go in opposite directions to turn fast. It takes a little while to get the hang of it. After a few minutes I coud do consecutive kick turns on the little halfpipe, and some semblance of rock n rolls. Much more than that was luck. If you notice in those commercials, very few of their tricks were ridden away clean. I’d be surprised if they could do a lot of those tricks on command, or on the first take. Like a lot of the modern “real” skate videos that we see today… LOL. 🙂
Matt
We purchased three of powered Circuit Boards from Toys R Us and two of them had quality control issues.
One of them had two issues. #1. One of the front wheels kept falling off. If I screwed the nut on tight enough to keep it secure, then the wheel didn’t roll. If it was loose enough for the wheel to roll, the nut would eventually vibrate off. #2. The power worked only intermittently. I’d fiddle with it for a few minutes and it would work for a little while and then stop. I’d fiddle with it for a few more minutes and it would work for a little while longer. After about 30 minutes it wouldn’t work at all.
The second one worked consistently, but not well. One of the powered wheels would vibrate making it difficult to turn in one direction. It would turn left fine, but not right. This made it hard to navigate.
The third one worked fine and was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, one of the non-working ones was from the skatepark set, and we returned it. The skatepark was pretty cool and fun, but without it, the working Circuit Board isn’t as much fun.
Great idea, and fun when it works… even if they are a bit pricey. But the quality control is sub-par on these 🙁
Kilwag
So are they tricky to get them to do what you want, like in the commercial, or is it fairly easy?
Kilwag
I didn’t realize these were even out yet, literally just saw the commercial and the web site doesn’t have anything in stock. I figured they were getting ready to hit the stores soon.
Christiandeath@yahoo.com
So after ten minutes errant carpet lint makes is an ugly paper weight