Congratualtions son, your photo is going to be used on some product packaging! Millions of people will see it and you’ll be famous! You’re looking at DryNites sleep diapers for rippers and bed wetters aged 8-15. They were spotted (tee hee!) in the Prisma supermarket in Kuopio, Finland. It’s a serious problem that some kids have. These are no doubt super helpful, but they didn’t need to traumatize the kid on the package. He’s surely going to be ridiculed, no matter how many radical (or upside down) skateboarding silhouettes are on the bag. The product is sold in 21 countries, but the US isn’t one of them. There are lots of active lifestyle and bedtime pics on the DryNites sites, but I can’t be expected to go through them thoroughly searching for skateboards because I have to go to the bathroom. – Thanks to Nicolas Bouvy for the photo

Portland brewery Hopworks has traditionally been bike-centric in their marketing. Recently I heard they were trying to engage skateboarding more. I thought I saw an image of Sasquatch riding a skateboard a few weeks ago but I can’t find it. It might have had something to do with their Sasquatch Strong Ale or possibly Abominable Winter Ale. Now there’s Nonstop Hef Hop, featuring a bunch of “playtime” activities on the can, some more athletic than others, I mean seriously, corn hole? I have not seen this beer in the wild, but I’m looking forward to collecting the skateboard version of this can, even though the art direction in this series is a little sterile. What they really need to do is establish an advertising presence on some sort of local Portland-based skate blog, if such a thing exists. – Thanks to Pete Lewis for the tip.

As I was adding a cool Dan Wilkes and GSD advert to the archives I remembered that Tracker Trucks has a book coming out chronicling their 40 years of history. You might have watched Jim Gray’s humorous and in-your-face video about it on Facebook. Early reviews are good, but some readers claim that the pages don’t turn. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

This is an old commercial for Sketchers Z Strap, but they still seem to run it every now and again. The 2D style animation is very low budget looking. I’m not sure if that’s an intentional nod to the Speed Racer era of japanimation or just a cost cutting measure. It’s most notable when the villain is in hot pursuit on his 6 wheeled monster skate. He looks al little bit like Oogie Boogie from the Nighmare Before Christmas, and he’s not really pushing, he’s just dragging that foot! In the climatic scene, our hero the ninja skateboarder shows off his vintage z-roller trucks.

Jamie Thomas for Olloclip, the indispensable, yet disposable lens and adapter kits for smart phones. What do I mean by that? Olloclip allows you to quickly an conveniently expand the native photo and videography capabilities of your iPhone (or Samsung) by clipping a a high quality wide angle, macro, or telephoto lens. The lenses work great, actually, but they aren’t super cheap, and if you invest the $60-$100 in one their packages, you are shit out of luck when you switch to a new phone. That’s right, though your old lenses don’t become obsolete when you get a new phone, the bracket that mounts them onto your phone becomes totally useless, and they do not offer the ability to buy just the bracket. What are you supposed to do with your old one? Well according to a spokesperson you are “free to give them away or sell them on eBay.” So while I can’t argue against the quality of the product (Olloclips are massively useful, especially when photographing/videoing skateboarding, and they are well made), I can not help but be angry about planned obsolescence and unnecessary waste. After all, it’s not as if Apple doesn’t have a history of changing…

– Thanks to David ODK for the tip. On it’s own, I might not post this guy, unless I already had him in my possession. But something about his amorphous presence is a little disturbing, like some alien sent down to take notes and gradually assimilate and absorb the skateboarding populace into his undulating mass, until he grew to the size of the Stay-Puff marshmallow man. Then there’s the trictionary on the back of the box, often completely wrong or not actually showing the trick it describes. His arm is a lever that opens his backpack for storing Bassett’s Jelly Babies. Very sinister. There’s no date on this, but judging by the board and the description of the item as “vintage” I’m guessing it’s late 90’s or early 00’s. Get yours here.

Cookies, chips, and soda! Actually, that used to be a diet that sustained me well around the time these boards were made. Check out these skateboards featuring the Keebler Elf, Chester the (Cheetos) Cheetah, and the Coke logo.

I’m trying to decide how much retouching and color correcting to tackle in the Vintage Skateboard Magazine Advert Gallery. Here’s a comparison for this Zephyr skateboards ad from 1975. Not surprisingly, the forty year old pages are discolored with age. Do you prefer the scanned image with minimal color correction, or the adjusted version that is closer to what the page originally looked like but has a slightly artificial look to it? There’s an enlargement to compare after the jump, but really this is just an excuse to get you to check out Zephyr Skateboards: Young dudes in heavy spots.

Before Mark Conahan was a renown skateboard cartoonist and all around ripper, he was a chubby little kid who modeled for Campbell’s Soup. At least that’s what I’d like to think since I lost my notes on this Campbell’s Soup store display featuring a kid on a skateboard. It looks very 80’s but could easily have been from the 90’s as well. Then again, those volleyball kneepads are very 70’s. Even though that board style existed in the late 70’s, the archives of S&A have pretty much demonstrated that art directors always lag a good 5-10 years behind the times whine comes to skateboard illustrations, so we can’t be sure.

This is a 1978 comic book advertisement for a skateboard good luck charm as seen on Etsy. Apparently we skateboarders had some sort of creed that the manufacturer of this charm was willing to send you a hard copy of, along with a list of terminology. What does it mean when a pro says “coping,” “go for it,” “eat it,” or “Kick flip?” I guess I’ll never know. – Thanks to David ODK for the tip.