The story behind the Blind "Dear George" Series and their battle with Powell Peralta.

Blind Skateboards just re-issued 3 super iconic graphics. All of the boards are hand pressed in the USA (as demanded by Gonz) not pressed at DSM in China like current Blind decks. They all come in two versions, a hand screened graphic or a heat transfer graphic. Original artwork by Mark Mckee.



In the late 80's skateboarding was booming and Powell Peralta and Vision skateboards seemed like they were too huge to fail. Around this time Steve Rocco was being let go from Sims skateboards (owned by Brad Dorfman) and decided to start his own board brand. In 1989, Mark Gonzales jumped ship from Vision skateboards (also owned by Dorfman) and started his own brand under the world umbrella. He decided to call his company Blind skateboards, a not so subtle dig at Brad Dorfman's Vision skateboards.



Their first team rider was now famous actor Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl, Mall Rats, Almost Famous) who came over from the World Industries team to help launch the brand. After that, they stole Rudy Johnson and Guy Mariano from Powell Peralta. This led to Powell launching an attack add on smaller brands, which Rocco felt was aimed directly at him, seeing how he was one of the only small brands around at the time. Rocco decided to shoot back and let out this now famous "Dear George" add. The add shows Johnson, Lee & Gonz all standing holding their new Blind pro models, each ripping off a Powell Peralta graphic.







The Graphics were direct rip offs of the most popular VCJ (Vernon Courtlandt Johnson) Powell Peralta boards at the time and redone by Mark Mckee with funny little disses towards the Powell guys. Even the iconic Powell Peralta "P" logo was flipped into a "b" for the add. The famous Ray Rodriguez Skull & Sword deck was re-done into a Gonz Skull & Banana board, Per Welinder's Nordic Skull board was re-done as Rudy Johnson's Jock Skull and last but not least Tony Hawk's Hawk Skull board was redone as Jason Lee's Dodo Skull Deck (Dodo being a bird that were too stupid to fly so they went extinct, pretty solid jab if you ask me).











After the add came out, sales of Blind exploded. Blind and World Industries were eating up sales of the larger and more established brands. They were also paying higher board royalties to their pros, which led to tons of big name pros jumping ship from the larger brands to ride for brands under the World Industries umbrella. By 1991, they were the biggest skateboard brands in the world and the rest is history.



"The George thing was a phenomenal sales success. I don’t think we ever sold boards faster than those three boards when they came out. But you gotta understand that everyone just sees the ad, but we never did anything unprovoked. George also did an ad that ran before where he made fun of small companies. We were the only small skater-owned company, and it was aimed so blatantly at us that I just got pissed." - Steve Rocco (TWS Business)



Blind Heritage Re-Issue decks feature 3 boards:

-Blind Jason Lee Dodo Skull Deck

-Blind Mark Gonzales Skull & Banana Deck

-Blind Rudy Johnson Jock Skull Deck



Shop The Blind Re-Issue Heritage Skateboards HERE



