Far out and groovy man!! It’s like a flashback from an acid trip!
I remember that ad like it was yesterday. I drooled over that setup for ages in skateboarder mag!
trucks from wayback when
You and me both Sean - I remember that ad from an old Skateboarder mag I used to have. I was most disappointed in later years to discover that Rollerballs were in fact a crappy wheel - they looked so cool at the time!
I don’t think I drooled over that one.
one of the more/less interesting things about the 70’s is that logical ideas (radius concave wheels) were taken to illogical conclusions (spheres?). Is it happening again? I’m thinking now of that ridiculous carve board or whatever it was with 5 or 6 rollerblade type wheels on a curving axle under the board from 2 or 3 years ago. All you can do is carve. Overspecialisation.
But the ACS ad is a beauty. Is that Wentzl Ruml in the little photo. I guess if I had gone on with riding seriously in 79 - 80 I might have rode those rather than tru(a)ckers. Did they turn well like Bennetts. Any one rideem?
I modelled my ghetto shape deck offa that G&S.
We all obviously suffered the same sickness as every page of ‘Skateboarder’ you see these days is burned into the memory.
These ads are interesting to me from another point of view though - and I’d love to see more.
I reckon they might support a view of skateboarding technological history as similar to all art forms and technological instruments. Why shouldn’t it be.
I’ve got a real nice big thick book called the High Performance - the Culture and Technology of Drag Racing 1950- 1990 - a John Hopkins Universtiy PHD students work. Best book on drag racing maybe. (lots of real interesting stuff on Don Garlitts). Drag Racing goes through much the same sort of phases as skating equipment appears to.
A kind of preclassical era (60s) with very pure singular forms of equipment.
A golden era or classical phase. (mid 70s).
Lots of versions and experiments with the original form but really variation rather than alternatives with odd outburst of radical experiment that tend to die off quickly.
Then we get a Baroque or Roccoco type phase (late 70’s into early 80’s)
Lots of bizzare (on the surface), lots of over elaboration, lots of excess.
Then we just keep on repeating the cycle with variations.
Someone could do a PHD.
Any day now the sworn enemy of the Daleks will burst in on this topic.
You’re not wrong MM. It’s already happening in a sense - that coffee table styled book, whose name escapes me now, which is a history of skating graphics and artwork, with pro-skaters giving insights to the meanings and origins of their graphic ideas etc.
So true Mr S.E. Thommo, we’ve all got the ‘sickness’ to varying degrees. The greatest sufferer I can recall is Johnny (Get Rad) Gray of Blacktown fame - he has a photgraphic memory of the captions of all the best shots - which made for much hilarity in various sessions back in the day. If someone did anything that resembled one of those shots or tried to mimic, quick as a flash Johnny would come out with the caption like some running sports commentator.
Can you recal this one Errol?
“Just like fine sandpaper on the boyzes wheels”
Who, what, where and when?
I must confess GH that the ever diminishing braincells are letting me down on that one…I’ve lost it ! More clues…
ok these 3 are for old school ritchie,hope these help relive the hazy recollections… 
the x-caliber
the pittsburg truck
the magnum truck
Back in the day I bought a set of 1st generation speed spring trucks from a shop called Surf ways.These I used on a down hill speed board. they turned rather funny and tended to float some what.The base plates were cast out of some sort of resin type plastic.The method of atachment was shonky at best .No bolts or nuts but 4 self tapping screws through the deck. These soon wore out so I had to go 1 size bigger as the holes stripped. The height or these trucks were big no low center of gravity here . The add with Ed Naddelin show them note the base plates are different from later editions.Don’t miss them but they were unique at the time.