Rio is the name of an animated movie that, near as I can tell from the previews they are showing on TV, has no plot other than the fact that a bunch of cheeky animals are hanging out together in Brazil. The movie doesn’t open until this weekend, but that hasn’t stopped 20th Century Fox from hooking up with McDonalds for a Happy Meal Promo. Finding out when the movie opens led me to another trailer where I learned the bird can’t fly, and he rides a skateboard in the movie.

Barb Odanaka has a new book out called “A Crazy Day At The Critter Cafe” that features a skateboarding cow in it. She’s been hitting schools and libraries dressed as said cow in promotion of the book. You might think it odd that she’s so gung-ho on the skateboarding cow part, but she’s also the author of Skateboard Mom, a book that was on heavy rotation for the rugrats in the Kilwag house. As far as children’s books go it’s fun and cute. Plus, it’s about skateboarding and it won’t make you cringe.

Adventure Time may be the best animated show on television, although It’s tough to top the Venture Brothers. I’m still waiting for skateboarding to show up in the Venture Brothers, somehow I thought it happen there first, maybe Dean trying to impress Triana Orpheus, or Dr Venture getting hassled by teenagers on the street… Meanwhile, Adventure Time snuck in some skateboarding. The kingdom of Ooo may be magical, but it’s not a free or all. It’s fairly flushed out, there is some crossover with the real universes, but then again Finn is the only human alive, and skateboarding has always been the domain of homo sapiens. I want to see skateboarding in my favorite shows (is that wrong?) but I don’t want it to be awkward. What the math indeed. Spoiler alert, don’t watch this clip if you haven’t seen the Mystery Train episode because it will give away the ending.

Congratulation to friend of the site Stephanie Murdock, who was just was named a Baltimore Community Fellow, an award that comes with a hefty grant that she plans on using to help raise more money for Skatepark of Baltimore. This is an interesting twist on skatepark fundraising, based on her plans to develop a new skatepark as a place to positively influence at-risk youth through facilitating positive interactions and mentoring at a new skatepark-based community. At least that’s how I understand it, you can read more at the Baltimore Sun. BTW – The congratulations are for being a friend of the site, not for winning an award… [Photo: Jed Kirschbaum, Baltimore Sun]

“Skateboard over and check out the lemonade stand. There is the puppy!” Words of wisdom from the box of the 1995 edition of Clue Jr: The Case of the Missing Toys. The rules fittingly state if you roll the dice and the skateboard comes up, you get to go anywhere on the board you want to. Unfortunately, none of the game pieces were skateboards. – Thanks to Curtis for the pictures.

This insipid marketing manufactured cartoon and toy line was created by the American Greeting company in 1983. According to Wikipedia, the cartoon’s creators were trying to appease television watchdog agencies crusade against cartoon violence by attempting to “reinforce the importance of group harmony over individualism.” The end result is, well.. as with any compromise of this nature, mediocrity at it’s finest.

I’ve been formulating my own skateboarding parody of this show for a year or two now. It will be called “Ho Daddy-Yo!” Yo Gabba Gabba has quite a bunch of skateboarding on it, usually in the form of some of the short intermission animations, but it also appears in the beginning of the “Cool Tricks” segment. In fact, I believe Ray Barbee makes an appearance on “Cool Tricks.” This segment is a couple years old too. So old that they got around to posting it on the Yo Gabba Gabba Youtube channel before I got around to posting it. For some reason they made this part of the Dancey Dance segment. Dancey Dance usually features someone at usually at least marginally famous leading the gang in a dance. Tony Hawk can’t dancey dance. – Thanks to Michel Skart Poulin for the reminder.

The ingredients in fake tattoos, in case you were wondering. This package of fake tattoos actually has the ingredients listed on the back, as if you were going to eat them. This guy looks familiar.

Kids meal toys at Taco Bell are (were, most likely) really cheap Weird-Ohs brand fingerboards. I am officially losing my mind now, because I swear I already did a post about some Weird-Ohs branded magnetic figures on a skateboard, but I can’t find it anywhere on the site. I can’t link to it, but the figures were on skateboards that were kind of crappy, so it’s no surprise that the freebie kids meal toys at Taco Bell are even crappier. It’s a shame cause the Weird-Oh legacy is pretty cool. If they did it right, a lot of people would really dig them.

My son found this in the kids area at Nordstrom. They hada bunch of single page sheets for kids to color on, some of them were Elmo, but none of the others were for actual product brands.