This is less than brand new, but I just had fingerboard fatigue, or maybe it was Tony Hawk fatigue, or maybe it was both. Mattel is selling fingerboards, and although they don’t appear to be branded as a Tony Hawk product he appears in a commercial and theHawk name is sprinkled on the products in a sort of innocuous manner. It almost like they are trying to downplay it, which makes no sense unless they are only hoping for an initial boost and don’t want to have to keep paying him down the road. A big point of sale on these is the inclusion of shoes for your finger, which itself is not new if you remember Mattel’s Real Men series from the 80’s. Hang on… why cant I find a link for that on S&A? I actually have one them… I can’t believe I haven’t posted that yet…
First up, her’s a teaser of Mattel’s Real Men skateboarding, uh, real man and not a doll. It’s subject that deserves it’s own post, so more on that later. The only thing we care about for this post is the fact that this toy from 1986 came with little rubbery shoes to put on your fingers, and the glove was disguised as pants.
In another odd twist, there is a fingerboarding company called Teak Turning that makes finger shoes too. They look awkward from the side but those soles look pretty cool.
In case you are wondering, it is possible to fingerboard without shoes, thanks to this helpful tutorial from Hot Wheels.
On to the main course…. Hot Wheels Skate.
Now these shoes may look like platform sneakers for club kids, and you wouldn’t think they would be very practical for fingerboarding, except these have removable inserts in sole that can be used to clamp onto the skateboards like Skyhooks.
Some of the individual board/shoe combos combos also come with a matching die cast car.
This park set makes noise as you fingerskate over parts of it, something they also used in part of their mid 00’s Skate Freaks line of toys. Hey look, there’s Tony!
Hot Wheels loves an unrelated creature tie in, usually sharks or dinosaurs. In this case we have an oddly paired aquarium skatepark with a one eyed monster fish. It’s actually functional too, the fish pops up when you apply pressure to the rail. He’s stoked!
Birdhouse graphics that don’t say Birdhouse.
I couldn’t find the TV commercial with Tony Hawk online, which is weird. Again it’s almost like a conscious effort to downplay Tony’s involvement. Here’s another one though.
Of course, there is an official music video with a soundtrack that sounds like it was meant to sound…. something that could have appeared in Pro Skater.
Stay tuned for the Real Men action skateboarder!
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