Way back in the dark ages when I was a kid and not just a kid at heart, I was in love with Hot Wheels, Matchbox, and Johnny Lightning cars. And then I saw Darda cars. Pretty much the same scale, but they also had the added benefit of a friction motor with rubber treads. These things would fly, and you could navigate loops without the need for a gravity assist. Also unlike Hot Wheels, the tracks were multicolored, and they just looked cooler. The cars had a different aesthetic too, slightly chunkier, probably so that they could encase the motor. Some (if not all) models had a pressure switch on the back which could be used to store the kinetic energy until activated. Set 2 cars on the track and start the first one off, when it returned to the start it would hit the second car and activate it. Meanwhile, if you were fast enough, or had another pre-revved car available, you could keep the race alive. The downside? They were from Germany, and were only readily available in Europe, or the boutique toy stores. In 1984 they made a very strange looking skateboard set. Granted, the few slot car skateboard sets that have been made all look awkward and grafted on, but the weirdness from this one come from the robotic astronaut looking skateboarder.

– Thanks to David Maes for the tip.

This is a Sire records promo photo (technically just a graphic printed on photo paper) for their 1987 Winter CD Sampler. Remember CD’s? Remember Sire? They were sorta cool for a while (Hello! Ramones!) and then not so-cool, trying to distance themselves from punk by promoting New Wave. 1987 was a couple years after signing a distribution deal with Wartner Brothers, which would explain Bugs Bunny. This is sort of a sad, trying-too-hard phase, with Bugs wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and riding skateboard. They made a full color t-shirt of this image too. Interesting that large corporation like Warner Brothers would brave the wrath of Nancy Reagan and mock the Just Say No campaign. Proof positive, once again that skateboarding, and even new wave are a bad influence.

– Thanks to Cool Steve for the tip. (No relation to Pizza Steve.) [Source: Ebay]

Animal Chin came out 30 years ago, and what better way to celebrate that than to build a replica of the Animal Chin ramp. It grew from an idea to make a spine ramp to recreate the famous 4-way invert shot, but ultimately ended up as a complete reconstruction, minus the tunnel. Unlike the original, this ramp will last longer than a couple days, and has a permanent home at Woodward. If you’re going to recreate the Chin ramp, you might as well throw another party with Johnny Rad.

[Source: Ride]

Here’s an excellent time capsule of skateboard harassment from a local Springfield Illinois news channel concerning a proposed ban on skateboarding downtown. Local business and civic leaders speak out against “skateboard terrorists” in advance of the ban, which ultimately passed. The video was digitized from a decrepit old VHS tape, so there are tracking issues and the sound doesn’t always sync right, but it’s still a good watch. One of the skateboarders makes a reasonable request for a public skatepark to serve the needs of the population, and they did get one after only 25 years.

– Thanks to Nick Rudd for the tip.

The Video Toaster was an Amiga computer-based video effects editing system. A hardware and software combo, it was pretty much the first consumer desktop computer system available for video editing. The first one came out in 1987. I can vividly remember going to a computer store to watch the demo tape and gape at the the computer on several occasions, convinced I would do great things if I could afford one. The stills above are from the Video Toaster 4000 which came out around 1993, and features Tonyy Hawk in some recycled Bones Brigade video footage. Of course this predates Tony’s appearances for Apple Computer on behalf of Final Cut Pro. The demo reel is cheesy as hell, and therefore well worth watching. I assumed that the Video Toaster products were purely a 90’s phenomenon, but they were actually being marketed until 2010.

– Thanks to Stephen B for the tip.

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.

Pure crap or Pure Genius? In the late 80’s I wouldn’t have been caught dead on a Variflex board, now I kind of want to make a t-shirt out of this old sticker design.  The post on the Variflex XP series still gets a lot of traffic, but I’d never seen a Spittle board… until I googled it after writing that last sentence. I found one from Ebay seller toddtwist, AKA Sean Goff. Turns out the Spittle board looks semi-legit. This one sold for a killing at $280 considering NOS Variflex XP series were going for $70 8 years ago. Art of Skateboarding dates this board to 1988, and they’ve got one in a nice white colorway.

UPDATE: Justin Goetz has a mind like steel trap. He recognized this deck from an old Lance Mountain column in the November, 1989 issue of Transworld. It’s actually a pro model for Michel Spitalhouse. I added scans to the end of the post.

UPDATE #2: Here’s link to a 1989 Variflex ad that features two Spittle decks in it. This was the street version, and there was a vert version too.

There used to be “no scene,” and it was sometimes hard to find people to skateboard with, especially if you were in smallish semi-rural towns, even if they were college towns. One the things I used to do instead of, you know, going to class, was making flyers for a “Mass Thrash” to try and attract larger numbers of skateboarder that I assumed were all hiding in the woodwork somewhere. How could you not like skateboarding and punk rock? It seemed absurd. The law of averages demanded that there would be more kindred souls out there, not going to class like me. We would hold these events right outside the student union, on the quad. There were so few skateboarders on campus that it was actually not a bust to skate there.  The logos and skateboarders on the left were all transcribed from the black and white newsprint pages of the advertisements in the back of Thrasher.

In this Joe Cool compendium we’re talking licensed Snoopy characters appearing on skateboard graphics, not pictures or figures of Snoopy riding a skateboard. All but one appearance of Snoopy as a skateboard graphic have been on Nash skateboards. This excludes Adam McNatt’s clearly unlicensed “Charlie Manson and the Peanuts Gang” deck for 101. Multiple Joe Cool color ways and a rarity of sorts after the jump.

UPDATE: 2026 Most of these Joe Cool decks can be seen this 1988 Nash Catalog.

Madrid Skateboards has some new and some not-so new limited release reissues out. According to the distributing arm of Madrid,  these 40th anniversary edition decks will only be produced this year, yet the Explosion model and Beau Brown model have already been available for some time. Not mentioned in the release is their most infamous model, the X-Team Rider, which has also been available for a while. Although simple, I’ve always liked the explosion model, even before I knew it was Bernie Tostenson behind the squeegee and Rubylith. Some of these aren’t up on either website yet, so check them out after the jump.