I’ve added 59 ads from the February 1978 issue of Skateboard World magazine, bringing the grand total in the gallery to 1,483 vintage skateboard ads! There’s some good stuff in there. There’s definitely some overlap with what you’d see in Skateboarder, but not nearly as much as you’d think.

I’ve added 97 ads from the National Skateboard Review to the gallery of Vintage Skate Ads. If you’re counting, the galley is a at 1,441 ads! These latest additions came from scans of used with permission by Di Dootson-Rose, the original publisher. Shoutout to Natalie Porter of Womxn Skate History, which is where I first found a link to Di’s online archive. The scans are not the greatest, as these were printed on newsprint some 50 years ago, but the ads are interesting because you get to see a lot of riders that didn’t hit the big time. The stakes were lower so the companies weren’t as concerned with impact. So far I’ve only goten through 1976-77, but you can view them all, up to the last issue in 1979, at the National Skateboard Review.

Here’s an ad for TDK tapes that brags about being able to “clearly reproduce the complete music spectrum of digital sources.” That looks like Venice Beach, and that looks like Tony Alva. What say you? 1988 is the year of this ad, which seemed doubtful to me until I looked it up and saw that 1988 was the first year that CD’s outsold records. You can buy this ad in the usual place for as low as $8. Photos from this session were used in another TDK ad. Looks like I thought it was Hackett or Olson last time around, but that ad doesn’t really show that TA looking long hair. UPDATE: When you blow it up there is no long frizzy hair, it’s just motion blur and shadowy leopard print.

It’s been couple of years since I last posted about AI slop generated skateboards, but recently my timeline has been hammered with ads from a bullshit company selling so-called skate shoes, and using AI generated product and lifestyle photos. It’s so very bad, almost as bad as trying to pass off corduroy slippers as viable skate shoes. I threw in a couple of less elaborate (and less offensive) examples as well. I’m not going to link to these brands because eff them.

Retro Supply Co is a sells tools and templates for making your digital illustration look, wait for it… retro. They provide a slide show of examples with each offering, and two products, Comic Junkies Tooklit and Inkchamp feature cool little skateboard illustrations. They have Aton of products, I may have missed another skateboard somewhere.

I added a measly 9 ads from Volume 6 of Skate Rider magazine. That’s all the ads there were. You see the other half (more like 65%) of the magazine is upside down and is called Wave Rider. I did not include the surfing ads in this issue, unless they appear in the skateboarding side of the magazine. Skate Rider / Wave Rider was based in Coccoa Beach Florida, and as such concentrated more on the east coast side of things, although they weren’t afraid to cover west coast or international sessions, be it skateboarding or surfing. Craig Snyder of The Secret History of the Ollie was on staff at Skate Rider. Check out Skate Rider v 6 in the Vintage Skateboard Magazine Ad Gallery.

The PXL2000 was a camera released in 1987 by the toy company Fisher-Price. These things cost around $200, which is about $590 these days. They were discontinued after about a year, probably because that was a lot of money for a kid’s toy. A verified working camera that isn’t “as-is” will set you back around $500 today. I first became aware of these back in the day because Dan Estabrook of Contort mentioned a skate video being shot on this camera, and this would have been anywhere from 87-89. I never saw that video, but I did keep my eyes peeled (unsuccessfully) to buy a camera of my own. Fisher-Price made a print ad for the camera that featured skateboarding, as well as a TV commercial with incidental skateboard content.

Check out this newspaper advert for Vita-Pakt and Hobie skateboards. At first glance you would be forgiven for thinking this was from the 70’s, but might think this is from the 70’s, but the publication date is actually July 14th of 1968! This ad ran in the comics section of a newspaper. Which newspaper? I don’t know. Ebay sellers don’t like to reveal that because then you could just try to find the whole paper or magazine for less than the selected page they are selling. Check out Surfer Today if you’re interested in how Vita-Pakt and Hobie teamed up to manufacture skateboards in the 60’s. Keep reading if you want to see the advert. UPDATE: Found another use of this illustration in an ad.

4 years ago I went somewhere and cycled through the San Diego airport. There were a handful of skateboard sightings in the airport, ranging from displays in the shops, a restaurant, and some tourism focused electronic signage on the wall. I was trying to link the post about Tony Hawk’s restaurant to this post, but it turns out I never made this post, until now. These are photos from 2022, so who knows if these are still there. Someone made it point to highlight that San Diego has a history of skate culture, as if that is some sort of big tourist attraction. I mean, it is for me…

I added advertisements from the first two issues of Homeboy Magazine, (AKA Club Homeboy). Homeboy was first published towards the end of 1987 and lasted a grand total of 7 issues before morphing into Dirt magazine. It was oversized and had a glossy cover with mostly color newsprint inside. The photography and layout of the mag was pretty good right out of the gate, but it had one major flaw in the eyes of most skateboarders, it covered BMX as well as skateboarding. I only added the 32 skateboard related (or non-BMX) adverts in these two issues. Skateboarding graced the covers but the advertising skewed heavily towards BMX by about 4-1. Spike Jonze was on the editorial staff, as was Andy Jenkins and Mark “Lew” Lewman. A pretty decent magazine with a good vibe, but so much BMX… Check out Homeboy magazine ads in the Vintage Skate Mag ad gallery.