Later Gator and the Variflex V-Man

In my quest to bring you weird/crappy/cool boards I found this Variflex board called the “Later Gator.” It’s crappy, but something about the look in that Gator’s eyes is appealing. As the manufacturers and bootleggers of those boards were wont to do, they produced versions with multiple top graphics, which is where the gold in this post really is. There is a bespoke Variflex Gator top graphic which is boring, boring, boring. Contrast that with the Variflex V-Man, which is pretty great. SO great that I’m going to make myself a t-shirt.

Later Gator. This board is a small one at 27″. You have to wonder if this was a conscious, if not half-hearted effort to try and get some proximity profits out of the Gator name. This board has plastic trucks which makes me thing it might be 90’s instead of 80’s. Who can remember when the first plastic trucks came out on toy store boards? I’m not talking about the D-Beam trucks…

And now the good stuff.. V-Man… I can’t think of exactly who he reminds me of, maybe some sort of food-related mascot like cheese sticks. Look at that strong jaw line… He’s amazing. Another thing that cracks me up is the “Of California” byline added to Variflex. I can tell you as kid who grew up in the midwest in the 70’s and 80’s that those words were like a magnet to a subset of the population looking for fun. Everything cool came from California in our eyes.

I decided to try and find the cheese stick guy this reminded me of but I was unsuccessful, or was I? The Frigo Cheeseheads guy does not quite look like the character I had in mind, but they do have an illustration of an anthropomorphized cheese stick riding a skateboard, so there’s that… It’s no Dog Cheese, but it’s still interesting.

Cheese stick guy looks a little stoned.