Another Russian Skateboard

I can’ get enough of these Cold War era Russian skateboards. Here’s a board from 1986 courtesy of a cat named Jah Fish of Facebook. Translated text says the price was 26 Rubles, or about $34 possibly, according to some speculation found in various discussion on the internet. It’s impossible to say because you could not legally trade Rubles for dollars then. I have no idea what the buying power of 26 Rubles would be other than this skateboard. I’ve seen sources claim average monthly income in Russia would have been anywhere from 190 to 266 Rubles, so this skateboard would have cost about 12% – 14% of that.

Although it was made in 1986 (see translation below) the deck and trucks defiantly look like they are from the 70’s. The deck appears to be cut out of a thin sheet of plywood-like material, and looks completely flat. It’s hard to tell from the photo but hose might be open bearings in the wheels. What those wheels are made out of… who knows. Maybe composite, maybe some cheap rubber like this one has.

Unfortunately, I could not get any of the online image translators to recognize this text. Digging that clown on the packaging though. UPDATE: Translation provided by a reader named Jason, so thanks to him:

The type on the box reads “snaryad sportivnyy / doska rolikovaya / sportivnyy snaryad.” That is, “sporting goods” and “roller board”. Soviet package design was nothing if not straightforward. In modern Russian “skateboard” is simply transliterated into Cyrillic which is skeytbord with a Russian accent. But either that term wasn’t in wide use during the late Soviet era, or maybe more likely, the Soviets were a bit more protective of their language, à la the French. So it got the more russified, bureaucratic sounding title “Roller Board”.

I had better luck with the images below.