Monday, December 26, 2011

A couple of weeks ago a UK based advertising company with the sinister name of Captive Media, produced the world’s first piss-controlled computer games system. Finally we’re getting what we thought we were promised five years ago when Nintendo launched the Wii. The main aim of the system (or pisstem) is to find yet another way to squeeze just a few more advertising opportunities into the already advertising-saturated lives of the jaded public. One of the first games is a snowboard game where you control a screen by adjusting your aim. It's spawned a thousand pun headlines across the British press and now it’s spawned this article. We decided to see how this joystick-controlled ad fitted in with the other ambient or outdoor (out-of-home) advertising that's been produced, so here's the top 10 examples we could find...

Friday, December 16, 2011

Earlier this year the Rom-Com Chalet Girl was released. At the time we didn't go to the trouble of reviewing it, however it recently came to our attention that this seemingly charming movie had a surprising muse. Back in 2008 another movie called Chalet Girl was released and although it went unnoticed and unheralded by the mainstream snowboarding and movie media, the similarities between the two movies are striking. Today we compare them…

Thursday, December 8, 2011



Yesterday on the Facebook group - History of Snowboarding (which is a good group that you should all join), Snowboarding Legend Mike Ranquet (to use his full name) asked this question: 

“When, why and how did the majority of snowboard magazines turn into the equivalent of ‘Tiger-Beat Snowboarding’? When I look at Thrasher or most any skateboard and or surf magazines they don’t make me feel alienated and old; yet most of the major snowboard magazines do. The snowboard mags have the same MO as any pre-teen/teen gossip magazines; they don’t seem to care about where they came from or where they’re going, just living in the now. Wouldn’t in depth interviews or features including anyone over 30 (or 40 in my case) be of interest to most? 

When I open a new snowboard mag I have no stoke or excitement as too what’s going on because..... well I just don’t care, yet I know that when I open a Thrasher there will be photo’s and articles that I want to look at and read. Skate, surf and even rock/music magazines make me feel young and evoke a feeling that I’ve been harboring for years and it stokes me out, but snowboard magazines make me feel old. I know I’m old (41), but that’s not the point; the point is that these mags should make me feel young but haven’t for the better part of a decade. 

With the exception of the ‘token’ old guy 1/4 page shot here and there, the significant history of our sport has been swept under the rug. Not upset, just confused as to why other board related sports have been able to keep all demographics of its participants interested yet snowboard mags fall short.
Next thing you know it’s kicking off and there are 145 comments. We wanted to add our own 2 cents to the debate, but there wasn’t enough space in a Facebook comment to get across all the things we wanted to say on the topic so here you go…

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Started in 1872, back when science was still struggling to come to terms with concepts like dinosaurs, comfortable clothing and foreigners, Popular Science has spent the last 139 years trying to predict the future. In the early part of last century they really started going to town making some impressively wild snow sports predictions. Clearly the people of that era were made of seriously stronger stuff because some of the ideas they came up with were not much safer than being a Christian lion tickler in ancient Rome. Today we take a look at how accurate they were..
 
© 1896. Design by Main-Blogger - Tinkering by Zhang - Colouring in by Illicit