Hey Guys, we’ve been lucky enough to get hold of a Real Popslickle deck to take a look at thanks to our friends over at SkateAmerica.com. This deck is no longer new technology from Real, having been around a few years now, but I see very few of these decks around, which is puzzling as it’s made using their super popular R1 board shape. Not only is this not a new series of decks from Real, the idea of a slick deck isn’t a new concept to skateboarding at all and it unfortunately has something of a chequered past… Which may explain the rarity of these decks at your local spots and parks.
To see the concept in its infancy, we need to go back to when pool skating was in its golden age, skaters used to have “rails” on their boards, thin plastic strips screwed to the underside of the board. Some real OG’s at your park, or hipster kids rocking the retro shaped boards (dtj16, I’m looking at you!) might still rock them on their decks, and they’ve certainly come back into fashion with companies like Welcome and Elephant putting out weird and wonderful deck shapes from yesteryear. The use of plastic rails (or bones) meant a much smaller contact area against the coping when performing slides, and on a material with much less friction than a comparatively soft wooden deck. The result, massive boardslides for days! Many pro skaters still use rails to this day, with names like Pig Rails and Powell Peralta Rib Bones still being the household names of choice for riders such as Steve Caballero and Jeff Grosso.
Unfortunately, as with most trends in skateboarding, it was only a matter of time until companies with no real interest in skateboarding started to churn out cheap and nasty rails, not fully understanding their purpose, to this day some kids still believe that their only purpose was to protect the graphic!! These rails were often made of either much softer plastics and wore away quick or brittle hard plastic that would shatter and crack.
Why am i talking about rails? It’s all because later on in the history skateboarding technology the concept of using plastic as the contact material between deck and coping evolved, and rather than using rails of plastic the whole bottom ply of the deck had a plastic sheet glued to it, very similar in concept to the Real Popslickle deck we’re looking at here. This was an absolute disaster, because as soon as the board got its first signs of razor tail the plastic sheet would start to peel, and you’d be left with a plastic sheet flapping around on the bottom of your deck.
So, history lesson over, why is the Popslickle worth your consideration? How do you know it won’t suffer like the slick decks of yesteryear? The answer is printed proudly on the decks accompanying information: “By fusing 2 layers of long lasting slide-able polymers to an R1 deck using heat instead of glue we were able to cut down the weight of the board while adding to its life and creating a true lasting bond – guaranteed”.
Unlike previous slick decks you would be hard pressed to tell this deck was any different from any other R1 shape deck – the heat treated process really does seem to have fused the plastic bottom layer to the deck, and i can’t wait to see how this will hold up after a few months of skating it. What i can say so far is that the deck slides – it’s like riding with rails on… But without rails on!
For anybody who hasn’t skated an R1 deck before, the concave is as medium as medium can be, and the decks are renowned for maintaining their rigidity over time thanks for the crossed grains used in their 7 ply construction, or as DLX call them, X-Bands! They have what i would consider to be a large nose and tail, which are both very much popsicle shaped – No block heads here!
So, would i recommend this deck to other skaters is something I’ve found myself pondering… And in truth, I’m not sure i would recommend it to everybody. For my style of skating it’s absolutely perfect and i would buy another of these decks any day of the week for skating bowls and mini ramp, i love it! However, for a street skater who has little interest in board sliding anything but metal rails, there’s very little reason to buy a Popslickle over any other R1 shaped deck – or even Real’s Low Pro decks for that matter if you fancy trying something different.
For anybody who wants to slide easier and longer this board is an absolute gem – and i love it, however for a flip trick fiend, the slight extra cost of a Popslickle deck may not be worth it for you, try a Low Pro 2 instead!
Popslickle decks and more from Real are available from our friends over at SkateAmerica.com.
