Hot Wheels Skate is a line of “fingerboards” – small skateboards used to simulate skate tricks using the middle and index fingers. The games were first published by professional skater Lance Mountain in the 1980s.
Tony Hawk fingerboards and matching play sets, which include ramps and other skate park items, will be available exclusively at Walmart. For beginners, kits even include “skate shoes” attached to the boards, which are easy for children of all ages to use.
Hawk, 54, told CNN he’s very excited about the fact that the calligraphy is suitable for finger fans of all skill sets.
“I loved the direction they had because it was more for all kinds of skills,” he said. “And their creative team is absolutely amazing. So the play sets they have are really fun and irreverent. So it looked like a really cool angle and it handles the finger game as a whole.”
For Hawk, the beginner-friendly spirit of finger combos stems from the all-around skating that it generally symbolizes.
“I feel like skateboarding is a great equalizer,” he said. “And anyone is invited to participate. You are only judged by your skating and not by your background. Uniqueness is key – uniqueness is welcome.”
As part of the partnership, Hot Wheels announced that it will donate to The Skate Park Project, a non-profit organization Hawke began creating public skate parks throughout the United States.
He said the organization was “important to me because I grew up near one of the last skate parks in the United States.” “This was my home away from home, where I found my sense of community, where I found my friends, and my sense of identity. And I’ve never lost how fortunate I was to have that.”
“So when I had some kind of success, I thought the best thing I could do was make more of these places that meant so much to me as a kid.” “It’s more about developing a place for your community, not trying to raise professionals.”
This year, Hook plans to host the second annual Vert Alert, a competition designed to highlight the “underappreciated” challenges of vertical skating—that is, skating down a slope or steep slope, rather than street skating or a skate park.