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.

I’ve had this alarm clock since I was in high school. Took it to college and beyond. It’s final resting place was in a box in my basement, destined to go to Good Will until my son spotted it. Now it’s in his apartment, and it sounds exactly how you think it does. The stickers range from 80’s to early 90’s.

I added 4 more zines to the Zine gallery, from disparate locations: California, central Illinois, Ontario, and Boston. Check out Swank Zine #18, Up From The Boneyard #1, Freezine #16, and Limozine, the Orange Issue. I couldn’t find the number of that Limozine issue anywhere inside the pages, if you are in the know, please pass it on.

PHOTOS NEEDED! I can’t find any pictures of this peanut shaped skateboard made by Nash anywhere, except for this scan of a JCPenney catalog from 1987. The only reason I can tell it’s made by Nash is the product listing says it has XR-2 trucks. Image searches return a thousand Peanuts™ boards, and “Peanut shaped skateboard” gives you Nutter Butter and Rollo skateboard cookies.

I added the first 4 issues of Bodyslam to the zine gallery, which makes the collection complete. These issues are from retouched scans of the original pasteups used to photocopy the zine. Issue 3 was a crazy one. It had a screen printed cover and some color copies mixed in with the black and white pages. Bodyslam was (and is) mad by friend and former contributor to Skate and Annoy Mark Conahan, who probably would have thought I was soft had we met back then. Mark offers a perfect-bound compendium of reformatted Bodyslam reprints, or you can download high quality scans of the original here.

I hadn’t planned on posting Tyler Skate Machine until I made the mistake of digging into it a little. It turns out the Skate Machine, a toy from Sungold meant to be used with their Galaxy Warriors line of toys is pretty much a ripoff of the Cheapskate from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which makes sense since the Galaxy Warriors were set up to be an off-brand version of Masters of the Universe in the first place.

– Thanks to Bobcat for the tip.

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.

So far this is only the second appearance of Woody Woodpecker on Skate and Annoy, but it’s a big one. It started how these things usually start, an innocent glance at an auction item or an old forgotten file saved on a hard drive. Instead of just a puzzle, this time we’ve got PVC figures, plastic fast food toys, alarm clocks, animation cells, skateboards, and a comic book.

Laugh Comics Volume 2, #6 was published in 1988. There’s no skateeboaridn on the cover, unless you count the teaser: “The mighty Archie Art Players star in the suspense thriller ‘Skateboard Scandal’.” And what is that scandal? Someone is sabotaging all the skateboards in Britain in a James Bond parody starring Archie as James Bland and Betty as Miss Henny Penny. Veronica is the Bond-girl (Bland Girl) Lord Cedric’s daughter Pamela. There’s also an ad for Archie posters (he’s on a skateboard in one of them) and an Olympic Sales Club ad where you can earn a Variflex skateboard.

I just added two Chicago based zines to the 80’s zine gallery, which I may have to rename because after scanning it I realized that Brian Sluggo’s 312 zine might actual be from 1990. The other is Chi-Town Shred #7, which marks the 4th issue of Chi-Town Shred that I’ve uploaded so far, with a couple more to come later.