As promised, here’s part 2 of the series on Huffy skateboards. I’ve got 11 different models to show you from the 70’s and 80’s, plus a couple of weird ones. Some of these were hard to track down because Huffy had the annoying habit of using the same model names for bicycles and skateboards, so trying to find better pictures is next to impossible when you have to wade through a thousand bicycle pictures because Google thinks it knows what you want to see.
There are rabbit holes and then there are all engulfing black holes of time wasting. I Had an idea to do a quick post about a clear plexiglass skateboard from Huffy from the 70’s that I thought was interesting. Huffy sure wasn’t the first bicycle company to get int o skateboarding (probably ACS,) and wasn’t the last one (Haro) either. My buddy Shawn still has his first skateboard, a wooden Huffy Quick Thunder. I asked him to send me some pics for the post and decided to dig up what I could in the meantime. It turns out they made a host of plastic and wooden skateboards (some in the 80’s), and even a fiberglass model, not to mention some prepackaged accessories. I had over 80 photographs, so I’m going to break them in to 3 or 4 posts by category, starting with the plastic boards.
As part of my continued effort to place Skate and Annoy among the world’s most prominent Skateboarding/MLS crossover sites I present to you this collab between No Comply skateshop and Austin FC. I got beefs. The green looks immature and cheap, especially compared to more pleasing greens with that have a storied history. Second of all, this is essentially a uniform, and you know how much skateboarders love a good uniform…
Super Skate Spray! While sifting through hard drive buried treasures I rediscovered these pics from a 2018 auction, and remembered Super Skate Spray from the Vintage Skatemag Ad Gallery. It came from the Lubri-Kote company in Texas, circa 1976. There does not appear to be a Lubri-Kote anymore, but there is an international Lubrikote company based in India that was founded in 1975. Are they related? Who knows. Maybe Super Skate Spray was so successful that it launched an international lubricating empire…
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has a program aimed at curbing impaired driving called Zero In Wisconsin. Their newest campaign posters can be seen at various rest areas, bus stations, and other locations. These posters feature people engaged in various Extreme!® sports and the tagline “Do this drunk!? That would be Crazy!” At first I was a little bit confused by this, because it almost seems like a suggestion and not a warning. As in, “That WOULD be crazy, let’s try it!” Turns out I’m not the only one. It’s not just a poster, but also a TV commercial, both of which were shot in the bowl at the 4 Seasons skatepark in Milwaukee.
Little Audrey must have been popular to warrant 2 consecutive titles published in 1967. Playful Little Audrey #70 only features skateboarding on the cover, but Little Audrey and Melvin #33 has a skateboard storyline as well. Melvin looks like a twerp.
VibeRide claims to be home of the world’s first longboard brake, the BrakeBoard. At first I thought this was just another iteration of the Board Brake some 10 years prior. The position of the foot lever is almost identical, but the braking mechanisms are noticeably different. BrakeBoards lever applies pressure to the inside rim of the skateboard wheel instead of applying pressure to the pavement. It turns out this original implementation also dates to 2013. VibeRide bought existing technology and revamped it. It’s more sophisticated than the Fred Flintstone approach of the BrakeBoard, but with that sophistication comes a $150 price tag for one truck equipped with the brake, a set of wheels, a paddle bit for drilling the required extra hole, and a skate tool.
