This Barbie and Ginger toy dates back to 1997. Ginger is a battery powered dog that barks and walks, and can be used to tow Barbie on her skateboard, complete with little Hotwheels-style wheels. The top frame is a still from a creepy TV commercial. It may have been 1997, but the girl on the left looks like she’s stuck in a 60’s children’s book. The screen cap looks craptacular, but that’s as good as it gets. Someone digitized TV commercial in pre-hd days. The same low-res version with awful motion compression artifacts is all over the web under assorted watermarks. Unfortunately nobody’s uploaded a decent version of it, not that you’d want to watch it endlessly. It does have a sort of hypnotic quality to it, in a Jonestown massacre sort of way.

– Thanks to Goofyfoot Rff for the tip.

Sultana Yo Fruit packaging, made in the Netherlands with 90’s American marketing. I especially like the “What the fruit do I know?” tagline on the side of the package. I’m not sure what the little mascot actually is, but Matthijs thinks it’s a cellphone. Stranger things have happened. They look like miniature pop-tarts, but not meant to be put in a toaster.

– Thanks to Matthijs for the pics.

Normally I might push this post off to the Broken Kingpins section without comment but the Tubuloids video for It’s Getting Weird connected with me on a primal level. I think GVK missed his calling. Their album on Beer City Records doesn’t come out until October, but you can preorder it now.

Alright, we’ve got special behind the scenes access to Skateboard, the movie, courtesy of this July, 1977 edition of Wild World of Skateboarding magazine.  The article seems hastily written, and does not really offer much behind the scenes action outside of some photos from the set. However, it’s got lots of  poorly written press release action. It also offers an interesting glimpse of the state of skateboarding at the time, such as the lack of “established rules of Downhill in organized competition due to the infancy of skateboarding as a spectator sport.” Apparently, all the competitions in the film were staged. I haven’t seen it in a very long time, but I recall as a kid I thought this was a sort of hybrid of documentary and drama. The tone of the article is amusing in retrospect, as it treats the movie as, well, a film and not the kitsch time capsule it turned out to be.  Pics and full article text after the jump.

Jan and Dean’s 1964 song Sidewalk Surfin’ is pretty much the first skatesploitation song. I haven’t actually researched that, Doc Skaterock probably knows for sure. It’s easily the most famous one. As a young lad I remember buying a cutout Jan & Dean greatest hits compilation on cassette tape just because of this song. Before we were exposed to the larger world of punk rock and skate rock, we actually used to derive a bit of stoke from this cheesy tune, and later on would bust it out for a laugh and some nostalgia.

Apparently J. Mascis is not over it, and has taken to skateboarding in a music video again. The Dinosaur Jr. video for “Tiny” looks like it was shot at the Northampton, MA skatepark. Aside from J. pushing around the park, there’s also a skateboarding dog and some roller derby action. It’s decent tune that will stick in your head, but the dog is not impressed at the end.

– Thanks to Tom Tallboycan for the tip

Mark Gonzales is interviewed over on Rolling Stone. It’s technically an interview as he is asked some questions, and “answers” them in typical Gonz fashion. Among the hot topics, you can sort of learn his take on skateboarding in the Olympics. What’s he doing in Rolling Stone? I suspect it has something to do with Adidas reps reaching out. Check out a trailer for Away Days after the jump.

Amazon Kindle has contributed to the advertising phenomena in which people go to a skatepark to engage in activities that don’t involve skateboarding. Usually it’s a TV commercial involving some radio controlled vehicle, or the next yo-yo abstraction. This time it’s a print ad in Time Magazine with a cute little girl sitting on the deck of a skatepark (which one?) enjoying a good novel instead of skateboarding. It’s perfectly reasonable, as long as she is reading the Secret History of the Ollie. The all caps text highlighted on the warning sticker works as an unexpected shout out to a certain truck company.

– Thanks to Tallboycan for the tip.

It looks like the long, protracted war is finally over as Skateboarding will be proposed for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, so it’s pretty much a fait accompli. The International Skateboarding Federation is excited about it. Who is in that federation, some notables for sure. Also, the Telegraph definitely thinks I’m too old to skateboard. On a positive note, four Canadian skateboarders are being honored for stopping a sexual assault and helping to apprehend the culprit.

(The image on the top left is from Mpora, who has a lot to say about the Olympic announcement but for some reason can’t bring themselves to actually link to it.)

Kei Kamara, former DP of Columbus Crew and recent high profile / scandalous signee to The New England Revolution taking his longboard with him on a flight to Boston. That’s right soccer/skateboarding fans…. more breaking MLS action here on Skate and Annoy. I never thought there would be another S&A crossover post that didn’t involve the best team in MLS, the mighty Portland Timbers, but here you have it. This is from Kei’s Twitter feed. You know, I actually felt a little bit sorry for Kei last year.