I was actually looking for some budget Vision completes (popsicles) that have the Gator graphic but just say “Vision.”  I have been told those have been seen in some Walmarts, but I couldn’t find any. Stay classy, Vision. The LED TV’s on display had a  continuous loop of snowboarding playing, interspersed with last minute gift ideas like this RC Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle on a skateboard.

The image on the top right was scoured from my hard drive, saved in 2006. It’s a model/figure called Extreme Zombie “Sparks” that is approx 18cm tall. When searching for a better picture not he inter webs, all I could find were these Extreme Zombie posters from Poster Lounge.

Hard drive cleaning time:  Freeing makes PVC anime figures and accessories, mostly scantily clad stuff in the vein of your typical Hook-Ups graphic. Even when they aren’t scantily clad, they still look like Sorayama robots. These must sell like gangbusters. I mean, who wouldn’t want a highly posable figure of a sensuous, big breasted mannequin riding a skateboard or a scooter? The skateboards all come with snowboard bindings, which is unfortunate. I’m not sure what the purpose of these is. It’s possible they are the plastic anime-centric equivalent of those small wooden manikins used for figure drawing.

Not much newsworthy about the fingerboard fad these days. If you’ve been to the toy aisle of a Target lately you’ll have noticed the the Tech Deck presence has shrunk dramatically from what it was in their heyday. They’ve tried releasing old school shapes, longboards, and even retro plastic cruisers in fingerboard form in an effort to sustain the market. However, they did not try whatever this thing is from China. It’s the mother of all wackyboards for your fingers, featuring alternative bouncy spring trucks and a rotating, detachable deck with built-in bindings. Just when I was absolutely certain I would never buy another fingerboard.

This wraps up any uncertainty about the authenticity of the Hobble Wobble, which seemed like it might have been artificially created to look like it was vintage. The name of the inventor made it easy to look up the patent this time. Harold Katz filed his patent in October of 1958 and finally received his patent in March of 1960. This short highlight article on the Wibbler must have been published sometime shortly after, making my original guess ( After the hula hoop in 1958 and before skateboard fad in 1964 ) pretty accurate. Somebody should pay me for this research. Hello Betsy? This is not skateboard related, you may cry, but I will endeavor to prove a direct connection in the following presentation. Can someone dim the lights please?

[Photo: Ebay seller Catzuzan ]

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.

The best friends are Fur Real Friends: Here comes Trixie, my skateboarding pup. The crowds are gonna show up. Rockin’ poses, to do tricks so sweet! We’re a team, that can’t be beat!

You could hope for such a thing, but this isn’t really a Grace Jones action figure. It’s a crappy Chinese-made toy. This ninja on a skateboard dates from 1989, courtesy of Stumblebaum.

Which came first, the egg, or the toy inside the egg? Technically not an Easter-specific toy, but it’s an egg riding a skateboard. This is a hard plastic version representing the actual chocolate egg which would contain a toy inside it. So it’s a self-referencing toy. In case this makes zero sense to you, Kinder Surprises are chocolate eggs with a tiny plastic toy inside. I thought this was a generic term, but apparently it’s a trade name, like Kleenex or Xerox. I thought it was vintage, but it dates to 2014 according to the seller.

I thought I read in Wired how Nerf had become the largest arms dealer (by volume) in the world, but I might have imagined it. I wonder if the Zombie Strike series was conceived to make it more palatable to parents who object to toy guns for kids. Probably not. This Zombie Strike Doublestrike pistol features an illustration of a skateboarder on the back. It’s a happy coincidence when a toy with skateboard packaging makes it into my home if wasn’t bought for me.