Based on a suggestion from a reader, I thought it would be interesting to see how wheels shrank and then rebounded in size from 1991 to 1995. I know this topic has been well covered on here over the years, but it is spread out over many posts. I figured it would be handy to have a quick retrospective in one place.
The wheels for 1991 were in the mid 50s to low 60 mm range. Real fired the first shot in the tiny wheel battle with their aptly named 53 mm Small Wheel.
Nearly everything for 1992 was in the 40s. Toxic took it under 40 with their 39'ers. Union and OJ had the only 50 mm wheels. In the course of one year, wheels dropped a full 10 mm.
Wheels bottomed out in 1993 with the majority of sizes in the low to mid 40s. A few companies have 39 mm wheels, too. The smallest documented wheel size I found was 37 mm. Stereo and Spitfire each had a wheel at that size. World Industries made one for Daewon Song that was 37.5 mm.
The sizes started to stabilize in 1994 and 95. There are still some in the low 40s, but most are in the mid to upper 40s. 50 mm and larger wheels begin to make a much needed return.
In the years since the wheels shrank, skateboarding reached the important conclusion that this isn't fun to do if you can't roll smoothly. Wheels rebounded to cover a variety of sizes in the 50 mm range. This would be the more practical size range. Lower 50s for technical street skating, mid 50s for everything, and upper 50s for transitions. Of course, some of this is driven by user preferences, but that's a general breakdown of what works best for the assorted types of terrain.
The spreads are from CCS catalogs. It goes from top to bottom:
1. Fall 1991
2. Winter 1992
3. 1993 (probably fall)
4. Fall 1994
5. Fall 1995
Notes:
It was odd to me that Spitfire wasn't always in the CCS catalog. They're in only two of these scans, 1991 and 1994.
These things suck to scan. It's so much boring work for one day of content. That's why I didn't include wheels or trucks the first time around for the CCS feature in September 2016.
2 comments:
I really should have included a wheels page from 1996 to cover the complete size rebound. Oops.
Still have my Real Small Wheels. Sadly there are only 4. The shop I bought them from in Jersey opted out of the “6 pack” marketing pitch that Real had.
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