Spitfire #1.

Welcome to Spitfire week. The next five days are going to showcase the first fourteen months of Spitfire ads.

Spitfire is the second oldest skate brand under the Deluxe banner next to Thunder trucks. At the time in the late 1980s, the company was looking to expand and this included Beware Records as well. Beware put out albums by Skatemaster Tate, Drunk Injuns, McRad and UNGH! Real Skateboards came into the picture in 1990.

I started skateboarding in 1987 and the first issue of Thrasher I bought was the November 1988 issue. I'm making an educated guess that the Spitfire advertisement on top was the first ad. The guy with the ray gun would be second. This is one of my favorite images for the company. Spitfire only ran half page ads for 1989 and for the first six months, they would often repeat ads.

Top: Thrasher - December 1988 Volume 8 Number 12

Note: This ad also ran in the November 1988 issue, but with the vortex and address in blue instead of green.

Bottom: Thrasher - February 1989 Volume 9 Number 1

Note: This same ad ran from January to March.