Jeffrey Ballard sent me an email with these pictures of some skate toys he retrieved while visiting his parents house last Christmas. He distinctly remembers getting them when was in 5th grade, which makes him… old, but not as old as me. The guy on top is still being produced in a couple forms. I’ve seen that form in a couple of sizes attached to parachutes. There’s a handstand guy too. On the bottom right there’s the first generation of commercial fingerboards every 80’s skater remembers. Clear plastic enclosing an offset printed board graphic. Super brittle and non functional, but sort of cool at the time. I remember thinking they could have done a better job the first time I saw one of these, but they were just toys. Tech Decks with $75 truck replacements were decades away. I think they made this type of fingerboards well into the new millennium, so maybe Jeffrey isn’t as old as I think. Then again that is a Dan Wilkes graphic on a Tracker board…

Editor’s Note: I found this post draft from 2012… I wonder what I was waiting for.

She may not be an actual sporting girl, in the Deadwood era meaning of the term, but Skipper is still an expensive date. $139 on eBay, which is ridiculous, but this old Barbie spinoff toy regularly goes for that kind of money. This doll’s name is Fluff actually, she’s Skipper’s playmate. “Fluff is a sporting girl” was just a bit much. Besides, she’s already been covered.

Thunder Cop joins us as number three in the Non-Fall Action series of craptacular skateboard toys. Part terminator, part CHiPs, all priceless. Well, not priceless actually, this battery powered skateboard toy from 1989 could have been yours for under $20 delivered. The figure is actually anatomically correct this time, so the real joy comes from the packaging from Feng DYI Enterprise Corp, which is still in business. The best part, the policeman pointing a gun at your face is riding a skateboard with a smiley face on it. Have a nice day!

From the same company that brought you Super Bat Justice Man, comes Ninja Frog on a skateboard. You might notice a similarity to certain Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don’t usually have this sort of encyclopedic knowledge at my fingertips, but the phrase “Non-fall Action” was oddly familiar, so looking it up wasn’t hard. The frog on the left is actually riding a skateboard, although it’s hard to make out. Those are turtles riding skateboards on the right, which is an actual graphic on one of a few different TMNT skateboards. it looks like one of them has a Hosoi knockoff!

Today (March 3rd) is International Pancake Day, so that means free pancakes at IHOP, hopefully you’ll leave a donation for a charity, which is the whole point. What you’re looking at is Chocolate Chip Charlie, a pull back toy given away by IHOP in 1996. You can still get one for $5 delivered.

This Porkchop, one of the characters from the Nickelodeon show Doug, AKA Doug Funny. This figure is from a 1994 Hardees promotion that featured other Nickelodeon characters on wheels, titled Cruisin’ Back to School Nicktoon Cruisers. Unfortunately, Porkchop is the only one riding a skateboard. The rest of the characters are on other assorted vehicles that look like amusement park or grocery store rides. For instance, Ren and Stimpy appear to be riding bombs, and Doug funny is riding a distinctly different looking rocket. Porkchop’s Walkman seems a little out of date already. Shouldn’t he be using a Discman by now?

At some point after I bought this Ben 10 action figure, opened it and left is sitting around the house, my kids decided the board needed to be colored in with a green marker. Fair enough I guess. I don’t think this show is on anymore, not even in reruns currently. Ben’s skateboard is actually a hoverboard. In the series, he rides it around occasionally, but in the tradition of making surfboard and hoverboard action toys, wheels have been added.

This Canadian box of Cheerios has been for sale by Masteraddams for a very long time now, unless he’s got a stock of them somewhere. In your box of Canadian Cheerios you could get one of six possible trading cards/sticker with illustrations of the Skateboard Gang characters from the mid 80’s toy series. The Skateboard Gang figures were attached to pull-back and go skateboards. They’re surprisingly expensive to acquire these days, routinely going for $15-$20, so collecting the whole set would be a hefty purchase.

Fantasma Toys radio controlled Sonic the Hedgehog Free Riders toy, skateboard edition. Reviewed by a little kid after the jump.

You’re looking at a computer game called Skateboard Kidz for the Spectrum (Sinclair) computer. The game was released in 1988 according to World of Spectrum, which would explain why it came on a cassette tape. Yes, that’s right, you used to have to load computer programs on some home computers via a cassette tape deck. Skateboard Kidz was made by Silverbird Software in the UK, and as such, all the radical 80’s dialect has a distinctly English accent. You can hear it yourself because the program files are downloadable from several places on the web, and if you don’t have a 25 year old computer, you can run it in a web browser with a Javascript MESS emulator. (FYI – Emulator does not seem to work with Safari.)