You may be surprised to hear that another popular toy from your youth, Tech Deck’s miniature skateboard, is still popular and still coming up with tiny ways to gleam the cube. Any cluttered desk has the potential to become a miniature skate park, but for finger skaters wanting a more authentic experience, Tech Deck has come up with kid-friendly cement for making ramps and curbs perfect for grinds and jumps.
The reason for the enduring popularity of Tech Deck’s miniature skateboards (they’ve been around for almost 25 years now) becomes immediately obvious when most people step onto a real skateboard. Performing tricks with a finger-sized deck is just much easier and safer than the real thing. The brand is now owned by the Toronto-based Spin Master (of Paw Patrol fame) who has expanded the line with countless sets featuring bowls, ramps, rails, half-pipes, and an emphasis on kids building their own skate parks.
Starting in August, Tech Deck is expanding that idea even further with a new product called Tech Deck D.I.Y. Concrete that allows kids to create random skate park obstacles that look and feel like they’re made out of real concrete, but without all of the mess and permanence of the real thing.
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The Tech Deck D.I.Y. Concrete kit comes with two main components: a sealed bag of the dry concrete compound (which isn’t actual concrete) and a plastic mold that makes it easy to create a simple structure with a curb, rail, and a ramp. For those of us who’ve always struggled to make something recognizable out of Play-Doh, this kit makes it easy.
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The included step-by-step instructions then recommend filling a large bowl with two liters of water and then adding the dry D.I.Y. Concrete compound to it.
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The instructions also recommend that the water you use be a little over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature, which is warm, but nowhere near a temperature that can burn. Instead of reaching for a thermometer, the kit includes a color-changing plastic skateboard multi-tool. Just drop it in the water, and if it changes from blue to neon green, the water is warm enough.
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Unless you’re really into the whole ASMR thing, step four—which has you mixing the concrete compound with the water—may not be entirely enjoyable. The instructions recommend you mix the two ingredients for a solid five minutes to ensure that larger chunks get completely broken up and every last particle gets wet. If you’ve ever played with a product like that fake Kinetic Sand, this material feels more or less the same when you get it wet.
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Far more satisfying than mixing the wet and dry ingredients is collecting all of the D.I.Y. Concrete compounds into a big ball afterward and squeezing out as much excess water as possible. But it’s not quite as satisfying as making balls of dough since at no point will you be able to eat the results.
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Included with the bag of compounds is a plastic mold that can be used in one of two ways. Kids can either fill in the missing sections (the exposed rebar in the middle or the missing ramp on the left side) with the faux concrete, or they can flip the whole thing over and fill it with the compound to create an entirely separate structure to perform tricks on.
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We chose the latter option and smooshed our ball of the wet soggy concrete compound into the underside of the mold until we were sure it was packed in tight, while the surface, which would become the bottom of our creation, was as flat and smooth as possible.
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Unlike real cement which slowly hardens as it dries into a permanent rock-like material, Tech Deck’s D.I.Y. Concrete only solidifies into a firm structure ready for grinds, ollies, and manuals after spending six to eight hours in the freezer. For a kid that’s actually kind of an excruciatingly long wait, but it’s much shorter than real concrete takes to completely harden.
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Once the damp concrete compound is completely frozen solid it can be removed from the freezer and the mold which is made easier given one side hinges open. You’ll probably want to wait a few additional minutes for the compound to slightly thaw on the outside which makes it easier to extract from the mold.
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Once freed from the mold you’re left with a skatepark obstacle that kind of feels like an ice-cold brick. Fresh out of the freezer it’s rock solid and great for performing tricks on as the frozen surface is actually quite smooth. But the catch with this concrete alternative is that your time at the skate park is limited by how warm your home is and how quickly the material will thaw and become soft once again.
That’s also one of the benefits of Tech Deck’s D.I.Y. concrete material. Real concrete remains rock solid until you come at it with a jackhammer, but you can just drop this molded creation into a bowl of hot water again for five minutes and it will return to its soft, mushy state, allowing it to be molded into something else.
The Tech Deck D.I.Y. Concrete kit will officially be available starting in August for $15, and it includes an exclusive Tech Deck miniature skateboard. Water and a freezer are not included.
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