Cooper Hawk

During the finale of Men in Blazers they aired a TV commercial for the Mini Cooper Countryman featuring Tony Hawk hauling his kids out to a waterpark in the middle of the desert. While trying to find the commercial online saw that he had ditched Jeep and signed some sort of extended agreement with Mini USA last year, appearing in several videos. And thanks to longtime contributor Matthijs, I also had some pictures of a weird MINI Skater, which is small skateboard with a built in strap binding produced by the Mini Cooper parent company some time around 2002. And just when you thought you couldn’t get enough MINI skateboard action, MINI released some augmented reality glasses that pair with your MINI to provide enhanced safety and visibility. I am not making this up! Whenever there’s a need to illustrate dangerous pedestrian (no driving) behavior, you can bet you’ll find a skateboard or two, and even a dog.

The desert waterpark commercial is not yet on YouTube, but can be viewed here if the embed code hangs.

Tony launches over a Mini Cooper as the car crashes into the launch ramp. Check out the behind the scenes video too. It’s pretty good.

Skitching through the night… It doesn’t look like this ever aired on TV, because of the glaring omission of the “Closed circuit course, professional rider, don’t try this at home!” subtitle.

Random anticlimactic appearance of Tony launching over a parade of MINI’s

MINI’s augmented reality goggles. It’s pretty amazing actually. Safety is great, but the what the public really wants to know if these an be used to watch cat videos on Facebook while you’re drawing.

The BMW MINI Cooper Skater from circa 2002. A small board with a binding? I’m not sure what the purpose is other than to deplete your savings and get hurt. I’m dying to get a look at the instruction manual. This one was listed a few times by Ebay seller bustyourbuns.