1976 Service Merchandise

Featured skateboards: Roller Sports Hot Dog (2), Landsurfer Lexan, California Free Former model CF-26

The 1976 Service Merchandise catalog has four skateboards sharing a page with rockets, a scooter that looks like it’s made for toddlers, and a sketchy looking climbing structure. Let’s not forget the skateboard-adjacent rope ladder for “healthful exercise.”

Page 14

Detail

The real-life skateboards

We’re working under the assumption that the Service Merchandise copywriters took some liberties with the names of the first three decks. Based on ads, wheel names, and searches for the skateboards shown, these decks all appear to be manufactured by Roller Sports, AKA RSI, out of Jacksonville, Florida.

“Hot Dog” with Composite Wheels – Roller Sports / RSI

Roller Sports may not have called their model the Hot dog, but they did manufacture plastic boards with that 3 hole mounting pattern and sell them with clay/composite wheels. Here’s a green one that doesn’t quite match the tone of the one in the catalog. It looks like it has a powder coated version of the RSI trucks seen here. This deck does have Chicago wheels, as do other composite wheel RSI decks that come up win searches. Chicago made their own 3-hole trucks, but the baseplates seem to always have “Chicago” stamped on them.

Here’s an example of an RSI setup that probably more closely resembles the catalog. Or does it? This one looks a little pointier.

“Hot Dog” with “Tutt” Wheels – Roller Sports / RSI

Here’s an RSI plastic deck with “Tutt” [sic] wheels that actually should be Tuit wheels. wheels. It’s interesting that this setup has a decidedly less beefy Chicago truck instead of their own RSI trucks in the same pattern. It makes you wonder if there was some sort of collaboration between Chicago trucks and Roller Sports. Maybe Roller Sports used Chicago as backup when they couldn’t meet their own demands. It’s hard to imagine kids in the 70’s swapping out the trucks on plastic boards.

Here’s an orange one with MK IV wheels. If you combine this with the wheels from the red one above, it’s probably the exact same setup offered in the catalog.

Here’s a green one with RSI trucks.

“Landsurfer Lexan“

This is most likely a Roller Sports Pro Line (sometimes Proline) board, or a white label board made by Roller Sports. A search for “landsurfer” turns up all kinds of skateboards, but none of them with a transparent Lexan deck. (Curiously, there’s a fiberglass California Land Surfer that sometimes shows up with a distinctive 3 hole truck.) The catalog photo doesn’t look like it has the name on the top, but neither does this ad from Roller Sports. These Pro Line decks have the same distinctive mold pattern, although the photo in the catalog appears to have an almost smooth top. These decks were made in at least two sizes and a swallow tail version as well. The one in the catalog is probably the smallest version. This version below has become less transparent with age and wear. However, with better preserved versions you can clearly see the structure through the top. This one also has the MK-IV urethane wheels advertised in the catalog description.

Here’s an example of a better preserved model.

Here’s an advert for a couple of the boards for sale in this catalog, as seen in Skateboarder V2 N4 April 1976.

California Free-Former model CF-26

As seen in this advert.

The classic yellow model, via vicskim2.

You may be skeptical about the “Adjustable trucks” in the copy, but they truly are, somewhat, as seen here.

Here’s a real-life version. Looks like that shiny chrome finish wore off.

Also available in brown.