Yesterday’s Snow Skate post with Archie was so unpopular that I decided to follow it up with more research just to spite you, the reading audience. These snow/ski/skateboard patents started showing up as applications in 1977. Curiously, I couldn’t find anything going back earlier that had a skateboard as the foundation. I would have expected something to show up around 1965 but no dice. We’re focused on snow, leaving ice for a later post. At least two of the patents I found are so similar to the finished products in yesterday’s post that they must have been filed by the inventor or manufacturers of those products. One surprise was finding a 1977 patent for the modern day snow skate, the kind with a skateboard deck attached to one small ski.

Someone went through the trouble to bring back the Gull Wing Trucks brand, but neglected to include the design that made them famous. Regardless of whether you are a fan of the original Gull Wings or not, it seems like a no-brainer to make them at least somewhat resemble the old trucks, even though you’re not going to fool anybody into thinking that Gullwings have been available without a break since the 70’s. They have one model that looks like everyday trucks, plus they’ve jumped on the longboard market boom with several reverse kingpin designs. And then there is the sidewinder truck, pictured above. I’m not sure what the purpose is since the web site doesn’t provide any information whatsoever, but it’s undoubtedly to provide more of carving feel to simulate surfing of snowboarding. Maybe the purpose it to eliminate wheel bite forever. Gullwing was advertising in Concrete Wave for what seemed like a year before they even had a web site going. It looks like once they got it going they pretty much abandoned it circa 2007.