These are prepaid debit cards, meaning you can only spend as much as you have in your account. You can still order junk from the Interwebs™ without worrying about going over your limit. Parents, teach your kids fiscal responsibility with corporate identity. Take a look at your choice of logos and personalities. It’s not surprising in the least. You can even get cards with cool punk bands like Clay Aiken and Good Charlotte. [Source: Sublimited] More after the jump.

This is just something that makes Shmack stand out from the competition. Check these pants that come packaged in this Nike SB style shoe box. These jeans feature Shmacks sneaker protector on the cufs of the pants to keep your jeans from ruining your kicks. And to put it the package over the top there are 2 gold Shmack sneaker tabs (the things that go on your laces, like the AF1s). And for those of you who skate we got some limited edition Shmack skate decks. CJ says you should get one and see him at the skate park. I’ll never win any fashion awards, and I’ve worn some stupid stuff in the past, but you’ve got a vanity problem if you are worried about your jeans somehow ruining your shoes. Dare I say, it makes you seem a bit feminine? Shmack is making a skateboard too, but it must be for posing since actually skating would definitely ruin your kicks. Does anyone know about this? Not our scene for sure. Ask CJ if you see him at the skatepark. Shmack makes a lot of 80’s style hip hop clothing as well as hoodies with a break away mask for…

It’s always a bummer when your rock and roll heroes start to look like your grandmother. That’s none other than J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr fame posing with one of the limited edition Dinosaur Jr skateboards from Alien Workshop at SPOT. The artwork is from their first release as Dinosaur before they had to change their name. It turns out there are also Dinosaur JR wheels. And I thought Naked Raygun skateboards were a niche market. I saw Dinosaur (JR) in a small club in Champaign Illinois circa ’87 or so. Loudest damn show I’ve ever been too. Unfortunately, also one of the most boring. I think I left in the middle. Those darn kids and their rambunctious rock and roll! I think they are back together again with a mostly original lineup. You can see enlargements of the product after the jump. You’re skating all over me. [Source: JMascis.com]

So there’s a stand with a bar that raises and lowers in height and swings away when you hit it. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that although silly, this thing would be useful if you were into that sort of behavior – for contests, errr, training or whatever. Never mind that the name has already been used at least three times before for a toy, some sort of fishing rod, and finally a scooter handle for skateboards. No other information available, except for the commercial after the jump.

Taylor, with his short haircut and businesslike demeanor, doesn’t fit the profile of the average skateboarder, who’s often a teenager with stylishly long hair and a devil-may-care attitude. Taylor’s more the Tony Hawk type, a guy in his 30s who can make money doing what he loves. He doesn’t fit the stereotype, but they still used This dude’s rad boards ‘feel right’ as the headline for an article about Drifter Skateboards, a small D.I.Y. skateboard manufacturer. Hmm… sounds familiar. Other than that, this article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution is OK, just brief. Hold on… of all the interesting parts of the process involved, they chose a picture of owner Ryan Taylor shrink wrapping an unidentified object. Someone fire that photo editor. Those graphics remind me of a certain Blockhead era. Update: Drifter web site.

V-Day for veterans? That’s Valentine’s day for the Veterans Division of Santa Cruz Skateboards, not V-Day or VE-Day or VJ-Day. Someone at NHS needs a little help with timing press releases. After 5:00 pm Pacific time on the day of the event does not cut it. Jason Jesse signed 250 special edition skateboards with a Valentines Day graphic that have been distributed among skate shops. There’s no more when they are gone. Check out Jason’s special message after the jump. I’m predicting one will show up on eBay within a month.

Bamboo is an amazing plant. You can use it to feed pandas, make flooring, furniture, and even bicycles and saxophones. And yes, skateboards too. The crazy thing about bamboo is that it has a stronger strength to weight ratio than maple, but has been know to grow 4 feet in a week’s time! Think about how many boards in a year that a typical street skater goes through. What if you could make a bamboo board that performs as well and lasts as long as a hard maple deck? There are companies making decks containing various percentages (up to 100%) of Bamboo, but they are mostly carving or downhill setups not meant to take the torture of street or bowl riding. Today I received an email and pictures from a Slovakian company with a Chinese manufacturer of 100% bamboo skateboards shaped like a typical popsicle stick. Even that’s nothing new. Check out some bamboo Skateboarding action after the jump.

Steve Caballero has endorsed Powell’s new line of beginners boards (AKA Cheap and Chinese) called Powell Golden Dragon. Tony Hawk does it, Andy MacDonald does it, even Mike McGill does. Why not Cab? The Powell versions ($70) seem to be a notch above Andy’s ($50) and Mike McGill’s (models from $30-$60). I couldn’t find a link for priccing on Hawk’s low end models. Maybe I imagined them. The Golden Dragon trucks even have a bit of interesting detail instead of being completely devoid of character. Let’s see, Cab, Hawk, and McGill. When do Lance and Tommy come out with their own line of cheapo skateboards? What about Per Welinder and Rodney Mullen? Oh wait, they already have crappy boards.

We’ve weighed in on “The War on Blanks” before, but it keeps popping up, and looks like it’s going to be an industry focus in 2007. Personally, I can’t respect hypocrisy, which is what I see when a company says blanks are bad for the industry but Chinese manufacturing is good. It’s all about the profit margins. I think it’s a case where the industry has made it’s own bed and now doesn’t want to sleep in it. What I’d like to see is information on where these blanks coming from and how many different skateboard manufacturers actually exist. The quote coming from George’s mouth above is actually from Andrew Reynolds on the web site called “A World Without Pros.” More hypocrisy and links concerning the War on Blanks and the War on George Bush as expressed on skateboards after the jump.

Believe it or not, that’s an actual CNN headline and not something I made up. With the news that Miami’s Cubans in exile are planning to celebrate the impending death of Fidel Castro in the Orange Bowl (WTF?) now is a good time to bring up the Subvert Cuba Project. Probably due to in part to our embargo, Cuban skaters are really, really hard up for gear. That’s hard to believe considering Rodney Mullen insists China makes the best skateboards. The Subvert Cuba Project is like a bizarro Berlin Airlift, transferring skate goods from Germany to Cuba. You can buy decks from which a part of the proceeds are donated, or you can send used gear. Now seems as good a place as any to mention that Cold War Skateboards has a Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy model called the Detente 2, of which absolutely none of the profits are donated to Cuba or