While digging around looking for Lucky Charms images a couple days ago, I spied this Hot Wheels Skate Tony Hawk Cereal Skate Bowl fingerboard set. I ignored it initially, but it did trigger a memory something I had flagged when scanning vintage skateboard magazine ads. Volume 2, number 5 of Skateboarder Magazine had a photo a near the end showing a fiberglass wave that Skitch Hitchcock had built and was carrying around in the back of a rental truck.

Witness the Hot Wheels Skate Flush & Go Skate Bowl from Mattel. From that fisheye lens shot you’d think this must be 3 feet across, but it’s not. Man, I’m really having to restrain myself from making poop jokes in this post… The set comes with one board and one pair of fnigerboarding shoes and lists for about $35. What’s the size of a Hot Wheels fingerboard compared to a Tech Deck? Has the fnigerboarding industry sat down together for a roundtable discussion on scale nomenclature or was there already an ISO standard? Who cares? This fingerboard play set is the… (self control)! – Thanks to Josh Baker for the tip!

The Olympics came and went without the chatter surrounding the initial inclusion to the games in 2020. NBC featured a few seconds of skateboarding in TV commercials and yet they didn’t seem to promote it much otherwise. I watched quite a bit of the events split between about 5 different channels terrestrial TV, but only managed to catch the women’s park finals despite having the TV on in background and scouring the channels regularly. Someone in programming decided show a metric tonne of handball, filed hockey and water polo instead. I imagine it was easily accessible streaming via Peacock, but I wasn’t interested enough to look for it. One thing that I did notice this time around was the lift on the ban of skateboard brand names on the graphics of the board. In any case, this concludes my essay on Skateboarding in the Olympics, except to say that Tech Deck released a bunch of 2024 Paris Olympic fingerboards, including a few sets with obstacles. One of those sets was for Sky Brown, who actually won a bronze medal.

First of all, Tech Decks are still a thing. Based on my casual perusal of the toy aisles over the past 2 decades it appears they were in a slow decline from their heyday in the 2010’s, but they are still out there releasing new products beyond the endless release of popsicle stick graphics from Element and the like. We get a lot of PR mail sent from various companies, and occasionally I’ll actually reply (usually in a flippant manner) something along the lines of “That sounds amazing! Why don’t you send me a (insert Extreme!™ product) for review? Most often times that is met with no response. However, not the case with The Berrics Transforming Park. Join me, dear readers, as I fulfill my implied contractual duty. Check it out!

Pocketknife fingerboards, brought to you by Blade HQ. First of all, it’s an old April Fools joke, so settle down. It’s a pretty funny joke too, especially the accompanying video. – Thanks to Steve Aycock for the tip.

Just when you thought Tech Deck has had run its course. Shredline 360 is a motorized turntable with swappable obstacles that is 20″ in diameter when fully assembled. It’s a little small and janky looking for the serious fingerboarder, but I can imagine a little kid getting stoked about this and spending a lot of time with it. Yes, I am aware that I used the term “serious fingerboarder” without irony.

This is less than brand new, but I just had fingerboard fatigue, or maybe it was Tony Hawk fatigue, or maybe it was both. Mattel is selling fingerboards, and although they don’t appear to be branded as a Tony Hawk product he appears in a commercial and theHawk name is sprinkled on the products in a sort of innocuous manner. It almost like they are trying to downplay it, which makes no sense unless they are only hoping for an initial boost and don’t want to have to keep paying him down the road. A big point of sale on these is the inclusion of shoes for your finger, which itself is not new if you remember Mattel’s Real Men series from the 80’s. Hang on… why cant I find a link for that on S&A? I actually have one them… I can’t believe I haven’t posted that yet…

Not much newsworthy about the fingerboard fad these days. If you’ve been to the toy aisle of a Target lately you’ll have noticed the the Tech Deck presence has shrunk dramatically from what it was in their heyday. They’ve tried releasing old school shapes, longboards, and even retro plastic cruisers in fingerboard form in an effort to sustain the market. However, they did not try whatever this thing is from China. It’s the mother of all wackyboards for your fingers, featuring alternative bouncy spring trucks and a rotating, detachable deck with built-in bindings. Just when I was absolutely certain I would never buy another fingerboard.

Jeff Longo rescued a newborn baby flying squirrel. The only reason you’re looking at on Skate and Annoy is because he eventually took a picture of it standing on a fingerboard. [Source: Laughing Squid.]

Kinder Joy Surprise toy found inside little chocolate eggs, for sale by a cannibal in Hong Kong. I’m clearly phoning it in today. Bonus Kinder Surprise after the jump.