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.

Check out eBay Watch: February 2015.

Greg Baller of Burly Caps fame attacking the hip with the (essential, I’m sure) help of an good looking Skate and Annoy shirt. Let the parade of comments begin for those of you that I still owe one of these to. [Photo: Devin McLean]

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.

Oggy and the Cockroaches is a French cartoon that sometimes airs on the Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network channel here in the US. It’s not very good from a writing/directing standpoint but it occasionally has a good gag. There’s an episode called “Skate Fever” from season 4 that features what may be the first ever appearance of fnigerboarding in a cartoon. The cockroaches have glued the cat onto a skateboard, and are following him around as he crashes into things. They make a quick detour into a toy store to pick up cockroach sized skateboards from a giant pile of fingerboards on display. As a whole, the cartoon is pretty heavy handed, lots of gratuitous TNT and slapstick cartoon violence that isn’t set up very well, but there are a few good gags and the art direction is occasionally interesting. The first episode supposedly aired in 1998, so that would date Skate Fever (episode 54) to about 2002 or so. The skateboard that Oggy finds belongs to a pro named “Roller Dude,” and it features a nose bone, which is interesting, at least if you’re the kind of skate nerd who is used to visiting Skate and Annoy… Check out a…

The graphic on this Rolls Racer ‘Conqueror’ deck is clearly stolen from the Eddie Reategui ‘Warrior’ deck from 1988 by Alva. This bootleg even has wheel wells and comes in a vivid green, it sold on eBay a while back, but I forgot for how much.

Kevin Kowlaski has a new pro wheel model with Bones. My heart isn’t really broken, I’m just slightly bummed out because I’ve been sitting on an “Oregon Skate Parks” graphic that riffs on our Oregon State Parks logo for three years now. Then one day I walk into a skate shop and see that Kowalski’s model on Lifeblood beat me to it. I’m more of an ideas man than an action man… I haven’t even watched the video yet, but it’s not even a limb that I have to go out on when I say prepare to be stoked.

It’s Super Frog, or possibly Amazing or Awesome Frog, riding a skateboard in the pages of the Extreme Animals coloring book found in the bargain section of Target. Quite frankly, I expected a whole lot more skateboarding in this book, but there was only this one image. Still, a frog with a gorilla grip, that’s impressive.

It’s St. Patrick’s day, and so here are some leprechauns.

The auction said this Black Knight skateboard appeared in a 1976 Montgomery Ward catalog. I would have thought that was an error towards being too late, but the copy says there are no loose bearings, which would imply precision bearings, so 1976 sounds reasonable after all. I had always thought the Black Knight boards were from the late 60’s or early 70’s. Maybe someone suckered the buyer at Wards into taking a bunch of dead weight NOS. Then there’s the “molded fiber wheels.” Composite wheels and closed bearings? That’s a rare combination.