I don’t know much about 70’s era R.A.C.O. skateboards other than they loved to use imagery on their products, even their metal boards had some kind of photo sublimation. The collection of fiberglass boards shown here features assorted beverage logos for Schlitz, Budweiser, Olympia, Pepsi, and 7-Up. It’s almost as if R.A.C.O. was the NHS of the 70’s in terms of branded boards. We should be glad that truck hole patterns were standardized. Imagine how much of a pin in the ass it would have been to drill for trucks with a triangular pattern.

Thanks to Jim Goodrich for this photo of Health Net insurance billboard.

This is the second insurance company advertising pay-per-mile car insurance with skateboard imagery. This time it’s Metromile with a selfie stick, phone cam, Go-Pro, and electric skateboard all in the same ad.

Esurance has a commercial out for pay-by-the-mile insurance, this one specifically tailored to Portland customers, though I’m sure there are other cities too. Not only is there some longboard action in the commercial, there’s a bit of wackyboard footage in it too. Then there’s truBrain, an energy drink the is also supposed to boot your brain. “The world’ first nootropic drink.” I don’t know what the means,I guess I need some truBrain. They’re using skateboarding imagery in social media marketing and on their web site. – Thanks to Betsy Gordon for the truBrain tip.

Ernest Packaging has produced a great series of marketing videos called Cardboard Chaos in which they make unusual things out of cardboard, including snowboards, surfboards, and of course, skateboards. Professor Schmitt and Tony Hawk were brought in to help with the skateboard edition. The first try worked pretty well until they got to the frontside disaster. After they worked out the kinks they let Tony have a go at it. His verdict: It’s essentially as good as any other skateboard, but it’s too heavy. They left out some footage that would have made it more interesting, but perhaps diluted their message. I would have liked to get the details on which construction methods worked well and which ones didn’t. Between the initial testing they went from a board that felt light to one whose heavy weight was practically the first thing that Tony commented on. All this proves really, is that with enough fiberglass and epoxy, you can probably make a skateboard out of anything. Beanies off to Ernest Packaging for finding a way to get exposure through Extreme!™ sports in way that doesn’t turn skateboarder’s collective stomaches. Just think, you could make a skateboard out of recycled issues of…

I didn’t know Target had a skate team besides the Flying Tomato. They made a promo video welcoming Curren to the team with a clever moment where Curren sticks an employee name tag on a red shirt as he’s walking in. It also has the typical Rorschach test response elicited from any skateboarder who’s ever seen a Target store in the form of skate footage on those big red concrete balls that sit out front. So I guess that’s their way of letting us know those spots are not a bust? Probably not. I don’t think Curren Caples is a household name yet, so it’s unlikely we’ll see this air on television. Why are they welcoming Curren Caples to Target? Are the looking to replace the Shaun White clothing line at Target?

It’s an advertisement disguised as Muscle & Health magazine. Check out the beanie and please don’t tell him I called him a freak. – Thanks to House of Neil for the tip. I guess he’s into… err… men’s health.

A Lunchables print ad and some random Lunchables skateboard action on their web site from a year or so ago. In trying to link to the Lunchables Uploaded post with with Rob Dydrek, I realized I never posted anything about it. So.. yeah. Rob Dyrdek had a thing with Lunchables called Uploaded. It was a contest or a web site or a web series aggressively targeting 13-17 year olds, for the benefit of kid’s nutrition of course.

Phone companies love skateboarding. Might even be a real action photo and not a posed shot. What’s up with that claw hand? Somewhere in L.A.. – Thanks to Kilwag’s mom for the pic.

This is the cover of the 2015-2016 CharmTV sponsorship brochure. CharmTV is a local channel all about Baltimore, which explains why I found out about this via that Skatepark of Baltimore advocate Stephanie Murdock. And here I thought Simon Woodstock was living on the west coast.