The Secret Truth About Walmart Skateboards...

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Mine was probably from Toys R Us in like 1999 for my birthday. It had pikachu on it and I don’t remember it rolling as badly as the typical Walmart boards do these day

i think the higher quality walmart boards can be good enough to get people into skateboarding, but the bad ones are bad enough to make me think they do more harm than good. i wish there was some kind of quality minimum they all had to have. even for the newest beginners, the worst walmart boards seriously have no use. they're difficult to do anything on even if you're really experienced, and can't really be transportation either since they don't roll. at that point, all we're doing is hurting the environment by wasting materials, and scaring some people away from skateboarding because they get fooled into thinking its harder than it is

They are affordable and often help in bringing the skate industry to a greater broader audience, i see them as the introductory skateboard for kids, to get them rolling around

Was a Walmart board your first skateboard?

Got to start somewhere, as for those that started with a shop board….must be nice! Thank your parents and give them a hug Give them a hug even if they paid for the Walmart one

This informative, video essay type of video rocks. It's researched, edited, and informed. Just what scratches my brain.

I love Shaq, he's a great man.

this is awesome, i love this style of videos. not only interesting, but actually from an deep insider of skateboarding culture. u have the perfect voice and delivery for video essays

The Darkstar decks are good af honestly the braille deck that I got from there complete was also good af used it as a back up got a good sesh out of it in Monterey came in clutch;)

I,d like to see someone go & buy one of these cheap board & dissect it , tearing each ply apart , maybe see what kind of wood there using , what kind of glue , if there’s cross layering , what are the wheels made of , what the grip is made of , what kind of metal are the trucks made of , the bushings , the bearings who makes them , the hardware , every inch of the board , just make it scientific so we all know what materials there making these boards out of so we all know how these company’s could improve on these boards . Kinda like reverse engineering them .

I started skating on a Kmart board back in 82', my brother broke it on the second acid drop, but he replaced it with a Powell Perelta deck. As a kid i was crushed, but happy with the new board, and looking back it was probably the best thing to happen. At 50, I still love skating and am currently getting back into it.

Mini logo is really great and so affordable. In the UK there is AWALYS online skate shops has them on sale, you can pick them up for under £50. Quality is mind blowingly great and not talked about enough at all. So underrated!

it would be sick if the walmart board companies put a little note in each package that says "if you enjoy skating and want to get more serious about it, we highly recommend looking at stores specifically for skating to get higher quality gear!"

Thanks for all the great content Ricky!

Awesome breakdown video Rick, i like how you covered all the basics and then got right into it

I currently have a Walmart board, I’ve replaced the wheals and bearings and am waiting till I’m good enough for it to snap before I replace the deck and trucks. It’s chipped to hell though.

Really Nice Editing on the Video Ricky! Keep it Up!!

Another way to buy an affordable board is to look at flea markets, swap meets and even garage sales, I found a Stevie Williams DGL with Royal Trucks and Bones wheels at a flea market for $20 that was board I started to learn Ollies on.

My first very own board was from a supermarket and it really sucked, but somehow I managed to even hillbomb with it successfully. Soon after that I got a random tony hawk / birdhouse board from a local sports shop, and I'd say it was 5/10, it helped me to learn more, but unfortunately I didn't have money to buy a real skateboard so I got tired of it. This was around the ages of 10-13. Now that I've started skating again as an adult, I first bought a complete that I personally didn't like. But this year I'm skating the "professional" one which made me learn like 3 different tricks in a month or so. So I highly recommend getting a proper skateboard that you build yourself. You won't regret it and even if you do, you can always resell it and get some of your money back.