In the fall of '69 I had returned from my East Coast tour for G&S and Karl Pope called me. I had been doing a little repping for his fins and he offered me a Winter job running his retail store. I politely declined. My goal had been to get to San Diego for the Winter and I was there with a great job at G&S. Later Karl called me with another request. Morey had moved to Hawaii where he was taking jazz ukulele lessons from Freddie Viquelia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqUpvCdJK8s and Karl had McTavish design some new boards. He wanted an East Coast Sales Rep. Did I have any suggestions? I put him together with Mike Callahan who had bought the Boynton Beach Surf Shop from Charlie Keller. Mike was looking for an extra gig. That Thanksgiving Mike called me from Ventura. He was in town for a few days to seal the deal with Karl and they invited me to come up and take a look at their new project.
That was the year that Rincon broke really big at Thanksgiving which is another story.
I had a few days up in the Ventura area living in my giant camper van (a converted ice cream truck) surfing the various spots.
Then they showed me their new project. The board prototypes and the artwork. The boards were very progressive of course, being designed by McTavish. But the comic book marketing was a 180 from the normal marketing approach at the time.
I was impressed by the uniqueness of the effort. Up until then their ads had been serious with the humor in the background. Remember “the fold the page to represent different kind of wave” ad? Or the name of Morey’s fin co. TRAF was fart spelled backwards. Or go back and read the original Penetrator ad. (a photo of a serious John Peck with some “read between the lines copy”). Acually the pre censored copy was really funny and the original name of the board was the “Pecketrator” until it got changed, I think Surfer declined the original ad and copy.
But this new marketing program was in your face slapstick comedy.
The satiric humor, though, was lost on some. I walked into George’s Surf Center in Huntington Beach and was looking at a row of Big Mac’s and Power Dudes. “How’re they doing?” I asked George Draper.
“I told them to take them back and give me boards without the cartoons” he said. “I’ve got a health food bar in the back and every kid that comes in here is dodging the draft. I don’t need greasy hamburgers and drill sargents on the boards”.
I also heard McTavish took a little heat at the beach over the ad from the “clear boards black wetsuits” guys up in Santa Barbara. lol.
But they did have a successful run with some very well designed boards for the times.
On the other subject in this thread. The honeycomb sandwhich construction.
There was a company in San Francisco. Aquajet? I think? That had devolped a hollow board with a honeycomb sandwhich skin. The had some models and then they offered licenses for the technology to other manufacturers. At G&S we got a license and built a mold for a Super Gypsy, our model at the time. I know we made a prototype or two. The problem at that time, 1970 or so, was that board designs were changing so fast they were obsolete before they got out of the glassing room so the whole idea of a molded board was doomed. For the time being anyway.
Karl’s Hollow W.A.V.E. board was different technology. It was a high density foam sandwich skin with a hollow core. The construction was similar to the Surftechs of today but without the foam core.
Karl also had a hollow fiberglass fin which was a glass on design. I had the prototypes and showed them to various manufacturers on the East Coast (Henry Frye at Surf Jet/Design One and Bob White come to mind) but I don’t think he ever went into production.
Maybe SammyA can post some of the ads I referred to. What a great collection he’s got.
The Morey Pope brand had some very nice boards over the years. Besides the ones mentioned above there was the Blue Machine, The Camel, and the Tracker. And they were one of the few manufacturers that not only survived the “short board revolution” but were one of the leaders. Of course getting McTavish as a designer was a major coup.
