Sonic Sidewalk Surfers

The Sonic Sidewalk Surfers are personified skateboards put out by Sonic Drive-In in 1989. These are the first personified skateboards to be featured on BPA, but they won't be the last. These guys apparently have names but there is no info on the figures themselves. According to some online sites the blue one is The Sidewalk Snoot and the pink one is Ms. Sidewalk Savvy. The other 2 are Mr. Big Fun and The Mean Sidewalk Machine. I'm not sure which is which but I'm guessing the green one is The Mean Sidewalk Machine.

Neil Smith

I picked this 7" EP up at a recent record show in the cheap bin. The cover is great - the Kool-Aid man punked out with a brew. There's even a shout out to the Jaks on the bottom of his board (which happens to have lemon wheels). This is a perversion of early-'90s Kool-Aid lemonade packaging (seen here). This record was released in 1994 on Exit Records out of New York. I wasn't really sure what to expect on this one. Neil Smith's backing band is noted on the back as being Vicious Power. The only info I can find on them says they're a thrash metal band (but I couldn't find a sample). That is unfortunately not what's going on here. All 4 songs are pretty cheesy hard rock with some over the top lyrics (particularly Katshit Kowboy with its "pussy snatcher" chorus). What I could find out about Neil Smith, in addition to being Vicious Power's regular singer, is that he was in a handful of punk bands around the time this was released so I think it is supposed to be parody but I'm not entirely sure.

Mechanical Skate Board

The "Mechanical Skate Board" is a plastic wind-up toy from Taiwan. There is no date but judging from the artwork on the box this guy must be from the late '70s / early '80s. When wound-up #88 will move forward propelled by the 2 large blue wheels in the center of his board while his arms oscillate constantly. Periodically a piece will raise him slightly on one side causing him to spin around somewhere between about 180 and 360 degrees and start him in a new direction. Unlike the last wind-up figure on BPA, this guy has his wind-up knob located a bit lower so it comes out of his legs.

Léo

I can't track down any info on this dude. He looks like he would be at home in a weekly comic and judging by the Léo on his board I'm going to assume that he is French (or from a French-speaking country). Judging by his feet he looks like he is in the middle of a varial or kickflip.

EDIT: With some help from some friends I was able to track down this dude's origin. He is basically a French Bazooka Joe. Léo Gum was made as Tubble Gum and Roll'up in the '80s. Tubble Gum was a soft gum that could be squeezed out of a tube. Roll'up was a French knock-off of bubble tape but came in strips of a meter instead of a yard.

Old Skull

Old Skull, the youngest punk band in the world! From it's opening mantra of "Homeless... Homeless...," Old Skull's 1989 debut album kick's in with a track that removes any doubt that this band might not be the youngest punk band in the world. With the other singer popping in to yell "People that don't have homes!" the song kicks in to let you know that homeless people can't get jobs because they don't have a good education. Just when you think the song is over one of the singers screams "I hate you Ronald Reagan!" All of this is yelled over a cacophony of instruments that almost resembles a song. The rest of the album continues in much the same manner, touching on then-current issues like AIDS as well as age old truths such as the afterlife of hotdogs and the killing of dead eagles. They also tackle the eternal question of skating or dying, with lines such as "1-2-3-4 we skate hardcore 5-6-7-8 go in your room and have a skate" and "like so rad like doing method airs on a halfpipe." I can't make out the deck on the cover but it is obviously covered in Garbage Pail Kids.

Q*bert

Q*bert was one of the top video game merchandizing machines of the early '80s. The arcade game came out in 1982 and by '83 Gottlieb boasted over 125 Q*bert products. Q*bert even got his own cartoon although I can't say that I really remember it (probably because it didn't have a Christmas special that they could keep re-running like the Pacman cartoon). Anywho, out of those 125+ products one happens to be riding a skateboard. Q*bert is seen here in PVC form atop his board with some kneepads and headphones.

Red M&M

Green and Blue M&Ms have already appeared on BPA, but this is Red's debut appearance. In addition to being one "poochie-ass M&M," Red is also a radio. He has no speaker, just a headphone jack. He also has no tuning dial, just a scan and reset button (and a volume dial). He is from 2009, so his mid-'90s look is pretty inexplicable.