OK get ready for it, this is a long one. I found a catalog for Athena International Corp in that magical place you’ve all heard me refer to: a box in the darkest depths of my basement. 8 pages of amazing crap in glorious color! Lot’s of bootleg stuff in there too… they even bootlegged the Nash logo! The styles are split between the 70’s and 80’s so it’s difficult to say exactly when this was printed, although there are a couple clues. I have no idea where/when I acquired this, I might have bought it off Ebay or a reader might have sent it to me. ( Was it you? Let me know! ) Enjoy!

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.

Bow before my arcane knowledge of useless skateboard related information. This Valterra Rad-isaurus looks suspiciously similar to Denver the Last Dinosaur. Both appear to be released in 1988, although I can’t tell for sure about the Valterra board, the copyright is hard to read. They both appear to be the similar species, and they both wear mohawks and sunglasses, but only the Rad-isaurus has pants. Denver is obscene! Won’t someone please think of the children? Follow me dear readers, and we will tackle the question that archeologists have been pondering for decades: “What happens when a group of pop-a-wheely, BMXer, fun-loving, skateboarding, and rock-music-listening contemporary kids open an ancient dinosaur egg?”

Here’s a beautiful turd of a skateboard that Valterra put out in 1987. It’s an Alf board, and it’s kick ass. Alf is in full Hawaiian shorts and neon Ray Bans mode. This model was auctioned on eBay a while ago, I don’t know what it went for but I remember being tempted. Another craptacular thing about this board is the fact that the graphics are on top and the bottom is completely bare. This one has GT wheels on it, which is really confusing to men because I thought GT was a 70’s era brand, so these wheels should have loose bearings. I suppose it’s possible someone could have put old wheels on a new board if the axle size didn’t change. Can you believe ALF was actually still on the air in 1990? I wonder why Valterra never put out a Back to the Future deck. – Thanks to Buck C for the tip.