Valterra may have been a second rate skateboard company but they did make some memorable boards. Someone in the art department had a pretty good sense of humor. The Total Blast deck from 1989 really pops in some of these color ways. This is simultaneously pretty bad and also pretty good, depending on your mood.

A reader in Italy (!) sent in some pictures of their own Commodore 64 skateboard after trying to find some info on it online. At this point in time it looks like Skate and Annoy is the premier authority on this phenomena. And by “premier authority” what I actually mean is, we’re the only one posting about it, and we’re quick to capitalize on the 2 people in the world searching for this. What’s going on here? It seems likely that whatever discount Chinese or Taiwanese manufacturer that originally made the legitimate Commodore 64 promo decks decided that they could make some more money off bootlegging what they assumed was a skateboard brand with some brand recognition. Another possibility is that this is a promo product for the C6 Game Maniac Mansion. The game actually features a doctor as character. However the board omits the word “mansion” so who knows. UPDATE: Thanks to Dan for pointing out this is the graphic from the English company Pacer. A quick internet search brought up a post we made about the Pacer Maniac in 2014. I’m slipping… – Thanks to Simone for the pics.

Another board from the old Canadian company Dominon. It’s no Rood Dood, but it’s still kind of interesting. This one almost looks like they licensed the likeness of Looney Tunes character The Road Runner. Who knows maybe they did. There’s an artist signature that looks something like T. Pailot or T. Millot, and other small text that could be a copyright, but doesn’t look like it says Warner Brothers. – Thanks to Blis Jo Toen for the pics.

I thought I’d seen every option of the Skatewing until I saw a post with this Turbo II branded abomination called the “Scorpy.” One thing you’ll notice right away is that the Turbo II version has rounded casters on the wings instead of the single, fixed skateboard wheels. Turbo II was a toy store brand skateboard popular in the UK. Digging around on the internet shows that they like to approximate some popular designs to evoke those designs without violating copyright. Maybe the caster wheels were the same kind of attempt to avoid a patent dispute, although it’s hard to imagine that the Skating was ever popular enough to make someone think it would be a good idea to copy it.

In my quest to bring you weird/crappy/cool boards I found this Variflex board called the “Later Gator.” It’s crappy, but something about the look in that Gator’s eyes is appealing. As the manufacturers and bootleggers of those boards were wont to do, they produced versions with multiple top graphics, which is where the gold in this post really is. There is a bespoke Variflex Gator top graphic which is boring, boring, boring. Contrast that with the Variflex V-Man, which is pretty great. SO great that I’m going to make myself a t-shirt.

This bootleg is one of the funniest crappy/80’s bootleg deck I have ever seen. The Thrill Seeker graphic looks like He-man getting busted attempting to devein a giant shrimp. He-man doesn’t look happy at all and the shrimp seems scared a hell. It was found on ebay, but it didn’t sell. I’m not surprised, because the seller listed it as a “Conan the the Barbarian” deck, so all the true Masters of the Universe fans missed this one. He looks a little overstuffed, like a bright pink Stretch Armstrong. Turns out you can get a licensed Masters of the Universe He-Man decks via a collaboration between Super 7 and Element. Despite being licensed, it still looks like a bootleg or at best, a toy store board. Trying to find better pictures of the He-Man deck turned up more carppy boards from Sk8 Bali. – Thanks to David ODK for the original post idea that I just couldn’t leave be…

It’s never simple. I’m already wasting a lot of time compiling a Huffy skateboards resource, and in the process I find an 80-ish skateboard that looks like someone accidentally included the Instructions or marketing materials on the actual graphic. It’s absurd enough to warrant its own post, but then I find another wonderful example. No board manufacturer is visible, but some well crafted googling unearths two more models in a couple different color variations, as well as the manufacturer “American Sports Services. Barry E. Smith.” You’ve heard of them before, right? Giants in the industry! But what, there’s more! Update: Found a radical Koala too.

There are rabbit holes and then there are all engulfing black holes of time wasting. I Had an idea to do a quick post about a clear plexiglass skateboard from Huffy from the 70’s that I thought was interesting. Huffy sure wasn’t the first bicycle company to get int o skateboarding (probably ACS,) and wasn’t the last one (Haro) either. My buddy Shawn still has his first skateboard, a wooden Huffy Quick Thunder. I asked him to send me some pics for the post and decided to dig up what I could in the meantime. It turns out they made a host of plastic and wooden skateboards (some in the 80’s), and even a fiberglass model, not to mention some prepackaged accessories. I had over 80 photographs, so I’m going to break them in to 3 or 4 posts by category, starting with the plastic boards.

Yeah, I’ve never heard of Thor Skateboards before, and neither has Michiel Walrave, except for this one. This Punk Skull (as I imagine it would be called) model is a rebranded Valterra – the deck is Valterra (same shape as one of their Skate Zombie shapes), the trucks, wheels, plastics…all Valterra. I now wonder if this graphic was used first under the Valterra umbrella. I’ve seen a lesser quality dept store board with the same graphic before. Either way, super rad looking mid 80s tank. Agreed. Michel has a massive collection of obscure toy store and D-list brand skateboards. Check out @michielwalrave for more.

Like many things (most) on this site, this post started out as a relatively simple showcase of a board from Michiel Walrave to add to the crappy board series. And because it was a company I’d never heard of I tried to learn a little more about it and found out there are barely any pics old AISI boards out there. You might think maybe it’s actually “AISL” and not “AISI” but those searches returned nothing.