Tony Hawk Unveils New Hot Wheels Fingerboard Line—Including Limited Birdhouse Life-Size Skateboard Deck

Sizzling Wheels was a serious a part of skateboarder Tony Hawk’s childhood. How might it not have been? Because the motion sports activities legend factors out, he and the model have been each born in the identical yr—1968.

In reality, Hawk credit Sizzling Wheels as getting the figurative gears in his head turning for one among his most iconic skateboarding feats—the 360-degree Loop of Dying stunt, which he first accomplished in 1998 (a full yr earlier than he would make historical past by touchdown the primary 900 on a vert ramp at X Video games V).

So it’s no shock that Hawk jumped on the alternative to staff up with Sizzling Wheels on the size mannequin automobile firm’s first-ever fingerboard line, Sizzling Wheels Skate. Simply because the Mattel-owned Sizzling Wheels model emerged as a scale mannequin automobile competitor to Matchbox in 1968 (with Mattel later shopping for Matchbox’s dad or mum firm, Tyco Toys), the Sizzling Wheels fingerboards now enter an area at the moment dominated by X-Idea’s Tech Deck fingerboards, which launched within the late Nineties.

The Sizzling Wheels Skate line, which was introduced Wednesday and is on the market in early August, is supposed to be essentially the most inclusive in fingerboarding, that includes footwear that clip onto the boards to make tips simpler for newcomers to grasp. Skilled fingerboarders can use the boards with out the footwear.

“The educational curve is fairly steep for fingerboarding, so the footwear are a novel component,” Hawk informed me.

The road of fingerboards, which incorporates 5 separate merchandise, options designs created by the Sizzling Wheels design staff in collaboration with Hawk and replications of a few of Hawk’s most well-known Birdhouse designs, together with the falcon, flying falcon and cranium imagery.

The merchandise vary in value from $2.99 (a single fingerboard and clip-on footwear) to $29.99 (an amusement park playset that includes a fingerboard, footwear and park-themed obstacles. There may be additionally a set that matches a fingerboard and footwear to a Sizzling Wheels diecast automobile ($5.99), a multi-pack assortment that features 4 assembled fingerboards that includes iconic Birdhouse designs and two pairs of skate footwear ($11.99) and a drop-in skatepark set together with a board and footwear ($14.99). (Hawk known as the playsets “rather more irreverent than I imagined.”)

The merchandise can be found in retailer and on-line completely at Walmart
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The pièce de résistance of the gathering, nonetheless, is definitely the Sizzling Wheels x Tony Hawk life-size Birdhouse skateboard deck and matching fingerboard.

Solely 100 boards, all signed by Hawk, will probably be bought on July 29 and will probably be accessible completely at MattelCreations.com beginning at $350.

As a part of its collaboration with Hawk, Sizzling Wheels may even make a donation to his basis, The Skatepark Challenge (beforehand Tony Hawk Basis). Because it was established in 2002, the inspiration has funded 652 skatepark tasks throughout all 50 states. The Skatepark Challenge has additionally supplied steering and advocacy coaching to hundreds of skatepark tasks worldwide.

“I’m grateful that Sizzling Wheels selected to help our basis The Skatepark Challenge. Principally it’s a validation {that a} massive firm like that believes in our work and believes in skateparks as one thing that’s good for youth,” Hawk stated.

“Skating was thought-about an outcast, misfit exercise once I was a child and even via the ’90s and early 2000s. It was misunderstood, and skateparks weren’t embraced. The irony is the youngsters have been labeled outlaws as a result of they didn’t have a spot to go. We have been in a position to change that narrative a bit with public skateparks.”

Since skateboarding made its debut on the Olympic Program within the Tokyo Video games final summer time, Hawk notes, there was much more curiosity—particularly internationally—in group skatepark tasks.

“The factor that’s modified for the reason that Olympic debut is the inclusivity issue could be very a lot equal when it comes to race, gender, age; in case you have a skateboard, you’re welcome into the fold,” Hawk stated. “It’s one thing that has been a very long time coming, one thing I’ve at all times believed it in however has been arduous to current as a result of skating was so male dominated via the many years. As soon as it exploded on TV and other people noticed there have been these 14-year-old ladies and other people from all nations which might be killing it, and a camaraderie that you simply don’t see in different sports activities, that shined via.”

Eradicating accessibility obstacles is a serious step towards making skateboarding extra various and growing the subsequent era of expertise, however these skaters who select to go the competition route additionally want competitions keen to pay them equitably.

Vert skating, particularly, faces a dearth of paid contest alternatives—solely park and road skating have been included within the Olympics. X Video games, which wrapped final week, includes a vert competitors and debuted a brand new “megapark” self-discipline this summer time, however solely males have been in a position to compete within the vert occasions.

In 2021, Hawk, the athlete whose identify is synonymous with the self-discipline, redoubled his efforts to resurrect it. He launched Tony Hawk’s Vert Alert, what he hopes will develop into an annual vert skating contest that crowns a males’s champion, a ladies’s champion and award prizes for males’s and girls’s greatest trick, as properly.

The occasion additionally includes a Legends Demo the place, in 2021, the legends of the game (and certain your chosen Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater predominant) all took to Hawk’s touring ramp—Bob Burnquist, Bucky Lasek, Andy Macdonald, Christian Hosoi, Mike Frazier, Sandro Dias and Lincoln Ueda.

Vert Alert will return on August 26-27 this yr, as soon as once more held on the Utah State Fairpark in Salt Lake Metropolis.

“I’m happy with the noise we made final yr and the success of Vert Alert. We’re making an attempt to supply a stage for individuals who select to skate vert and we’ve equal disciplines for female and male skaters,” Hawk stated. “Vert skating is an underappreciated self-discipline in skateboarding, completely probably the most thrilling for spectators.”

Hawk would be the first to reward park skating and clarifies he isn’t taking something away from it. However, for example of what he means, he factors to Aussie Keegan Palmer’s successful run within the Olympics males’s park occasion—punctuated by his kickflip physique varial 540. It was a large feat—the primary time the trick had been landed in a serious park contest.

And but: “That was one trick of 12 tougher tips that [13-year-old Brazilian skateboarder] Gui Khury did in his run [at X Games last week],” Hawk stated. “Folks don’t perceive that [vert] is a special degree of technical problem compared to park skating. I really like park skating, and there’s a sure nuance and magnificence and ability set individuals must navigate the terrain. However for true aerial and acrobating points, it’s all about vert. We wanna promote that.”

It’s unclear if Hawk himself will be capable to take part within the Legends Demo once more this yr. He broke his proper femur in March in a nasty fall from his warehouse ramp.

It was the identical week HBO dropped the trailer for the documentary about Hawk’s life, Tony Hawk: Till the Wheels Fall Off. Hawk was set to current on the Oscars alongside fellow motion sports activities icons Shaun White and Kelly Slater, and he wasn’t about to let the harm cease him.

He set about his restoration methodically—maybe maniacally. He didn’t miss the Oscars. Now, 4 months later, he’s back on his ramp making an attempt Caballerials. Don’t ever doubt Tony Hawk.

A part of what the HBO documentary captured so properly was Hawk’s principally swish, however typically seemingly painful transition from competitors and life on his board to the enterprise of working his model. He’s studying to come back to phrases with the inevitable technique of growing older (hey, it’s higher than the choice) and determining what he can and might’t nonetheless do on the ramp on the age of 54. Together with his new Sizzling Wheels fingerboards, nonetheless, he and the model—now each center aged—can return to childhood.