I've seen a couple Anthrax skateboard related graphics but this is definitely my favorite. Their mascot, Not Man, is pictured here pushing hard and rocking the flipped up hat and Dogtown Suicidal Tendencies deck. I once met a collector of metal band skateboards who had, along with a slew of Metallica decks, an official Anthrax deck with a variation of this graphic on a blue background.
Awesome. I guess that is the title of this game. It also says "Rats Rule" and "Crash and Burn." This is a ticket giving machine by Sega that is basically like the old SNAFU game. It puts a ball into play and you control the tilt of the board and try to get to the finish hole. This rat has an unusual style of skating.
My friend who runs a used toy shop snagged this dude for me. I don't know anything about him but my guess is that he is from a toy vending machine. He doesn't stand much more than inch tall.
Kermit the Frog in his Muppet Babies incarnation rollin' on a red cruiser from 1986. This was a McDonald's happy meal toy which was part of set that included Fozzie, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, and in some markets Animal. The figures can be removed from their vehicles and interchanged. Fozzie is the only other one who is standing (shown below on Kermit's board). I would've thought if any Muppet Baby skated it would've been Gonzo (had I given it any thought). He was a daredevil after all...
My friend hooked me up with a bootleg JFA "1985 Skate Tour Skeleton" shirt today. After looking for the graphic on the back and inserts of their records I finally found it in a Placebo Records catalog I had stuffed in the first LP. The shirt had a two color print (seen here) but the bootleg version just has the single color graphic above and omits the "'85 Skate Tour" print at the bottom. Other awesome graphics include a "Blatant Localism '88" poster where they reenact the cover of the first 7" seven years later. There is also a Placebo shirt with a skeletal invert. Other not so awesome graphics include a "tie die" plain or JFA shirt and a Placebo rollerskating skeleton.
No wimps! These type of stickers seemed ubiquitous back in the 80s. My friend found a couple of these along with some "No Nerds" stickers (featuring Nerds candy crossed out) a couple years ago. This sticker features J. Wellington Wimpy cruising on a longboard (probably on his way to bum some hamburgers).
Skateboards, mutants and lasers. Quite a combo for the cover of Ribit! #1 (1989). I'm not quite sure where I came across this but I've had it for a couple years at least. Ribit starts out as a lizard in love with a "punked-out boom box Quasimodo" named Thog. Thog's sorceress master makes up a batch of mutagen to make the ultimate weapon. Thog tosses in his "Blond Fire" VHS cassette and Ribit jumps in. She emerges the amphibious woman on the cover and he teaches her to skate.
Ribit skates goofy on the cover but skates regular in the story (as does Thog).
This ripper appears on the back cover of Nardcore band Stalag 13's one and only release - In Control (Upstart Records 1984). This drawing is uncredited on the original release but later versions attribute it to Jaime Hernandez (who also drew the front cover).
Nerds boxes have long been graced with nerds skating in addition to a myriad of other wacky hijinks. I picked up this guy in the late 80s and he was indeed filled with nerds candy. As seen below his face turns aside to get the nerds out and his back opens so he can be refilled. I should also mention he is rocking a sweet Wonka deck.
Update: I came across a grape nerd!
Update2: My memory must be way off on these - I found a pic online with packaging and it is dated 2001. I definitely had a green nerd container (sans skateboard) from my childhood.
Felix catching some air from 1989. There are a lot of unusual things going on here, most notably the size of the nose bone on his deck. He's also wearing full pads but no helmet. Usually when cartoon characters skate they don't bother putting shoes on but Felix did. He also felt the need to put clothes on, and what he decided to wear was a powder blue wrestling onesie. All that aside, I've always liked this little dude. My friend gave him to me for my birthday in middle school after a visit to the dollar store. You don't see too many figures grabbing the deck. Felix not only racked up skate points, but also some punk points by serving as the mascot for The Queers.
BPA. Beach Party Attitude. This was a phrase I once read on a Gang Green single, a play on a Budweiser logo (what was beechwood aged became beech party attitude). I was never quite sure if they intentionally misspelled beach seeing as how they also misspelled "their" and "conducive." I started using the term beach party attitude similar to the Bad Brains "Positive Mental Attitude" which was naturally shortened to BPA to coincide with PMA. I later tracked down the picture disc version of this release (on Roadracer Records from 1987). And while I hate pic discs, it is hard to not love this one:
The A-side is "We'll Give It to You" and the B-side is "Skate to Hell." They added the Skull Skates logo below the rear truck as this was an actual deck that Skull Skates produced (along with a slew of other punk bands including Social Distortion, The Vandals and LA's Wasted Youth). I once owned the Wasted Youth deck but donated it to the walls of Smash! Records in Washington, DC. The trucks say HARDCORE on the baseplates.
