These Vintage Skateboarding Stickers are Totally Rad!

I mentioned back in my latest Horde Address that the great Shawn Robare (from Branded in the 80s) sent me a little care package full of all kinds of goodies. Each item in the box deserves (and will eventually get) its own post, but one of the items in the package is so unbelievably awesome, that I just couldn't wait to blog about them.

As I was going through the box that Shawn sent, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw these beautiful vintage skateboarding trading card stickers...

What a stunning slice of pop culture history we have here. From a designer's standpoint alone, the retro graphics on these cards are a lesson in 70s style. And each card is like a little time capsule offering up a taste of what the skateboard boom of the 70s was like, at least in the mainstream view.

It's all I have in me to not go and get the above image tattooed on my chest.

 

Looking through these cards (which are actually stickers, much like Wacky Packages or Garbage Pail Kids), I'm thinking that these are from around the late 70s. I'm mostly basing this on the style of the images, the groovy sayings that are on some of them. If so, then they are possibly just pre-Dogtown takeover, or just completely ignoring the whole radical California boom that skateboarding experienced once legends like Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta hit the scene.

One bit that was pretty interesting, however, was the card shown below declaring that skateboarding should be made an Olympic event in 1984. If these cards were made int he late 70s, why not say 1980? Are these possibly made post-1980? If so, I'd venture to say that the graphics were probably a little out of date by then.

Another clue about the date of these cards lies in the brief biographies of various champion skaters of the day that are on the backs of each card. The latest date I could find on any of these was 1977. And let's face it, these pictures look pretty groovy.

Anyway, I just love stuff like this and can't thank Shawn enough! Looking at these cards has me looking forward to warmer weather up here in the Pacific Northwest when I can strap on the pads, grab my deck and glide over a little concrete once again.

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Scratch-n-Sniff Stickers!

Yeah, I admit it, I was a sticker collector when I was a kid. It may not have been the manliest of pursuits, but when I was in grade school, it was practically mandatory that you had a sticker book. Everyone had one, boys, girls, teachers... everyone. The best thing you could do to maintain some sort of level of toughness was to avoid those glittery unicorn stickers that girls kept trying to give us and to stick to ones that possessed an aspect of life that little boys truly hold dear in their hearts... stinkiness.

And the best stinky stickers came from a company called Trend (not that I knew that then), and those were the ones you cherished. And if you collected enough of the effluvial patches in your sticker book, the various noxious fumes would stir together into a greenish cloud powerful enough to keep away even the most persistent sparkly unicorn sticker lover.

Here are five of my favorites...

1. DILL-IGHTFUL!

When you were a kid, pickles were not only stinky, but just plain funny. They're sort of a mix between a poop and a giant booger. Just sayin'. Plus, all the girls I know hated this one, which meant I got enough extras from kids who didn't want hem to make my sticker book smell like a bucket of Chicago style relish.

2. A WINNER!

You know who's a winner? This sticker is, that's who. It's got a hot rod car on it and smells like gasoline, fer cryin' out loud. It doesn't get any manlier than that!

3. YOU'RE TOPS!

This one wasn't exactly many, but it smelled just like a pine tree. I remember getting this one from my 3rd grade teacher on a drawing I did in class and sitting at home, by our fake Christmas tree sniffing this one like crazy.

4. HOT STUFF

Just one whiff of this pizza-smelling sticker was enough to set our child-sized stomachs growling with pizza fever. I had several of these in my sticker book, every one of them scratched to the point of illegibility. If I could have shoved one permanently up my nose, I would have.

5. SCENT-SATIONAL!

Ahhh yes... the sticker no teacher would ever give us. This one, which growing up in rural Michigan has taught me, smells just like the spray of the common skunk. These became contraband in 4th grade and thus morphed into a sort of underground currency. We'd carry them around all day, hidden in our pockets, with our jeans smelling like we'd just gotten back from an unfortunate camping trip.





That's it for this week's Top 5 list! Tune in next week for more!