#Extreme Sports

5 items

Video thumbnail — "Rocket Power" Theme Song (HQ) | Episode Opening Credits | Nick Animation
TV 1999–2004

Rocket Power

Four friends in a Southern California beach town who lived for surfing, skateboarding, and street hockey. Rocket Power bottled the turn-of-the-millennium extreme-sports craze — all attitude, boardshorts, and "friends before competition."

Video thumbnail — Shaun White's Turin 2006 Olympics Half-Pipe Victory Run
Celebrities 2006–2010 peak

Shaun White

The red-haired "Flying Tomato" who won Olympic halfpipe gold in Turin in 2006, won again in Vancouver in 2010 with a victory-lap Double McTwist 1260, and piled up X Games medals in between. He had his own Ubisoft video games too.

Video thumbnail — The FIRST EVER SlamBall Game on TELEVISION!
Trends 2002–2003 (revivals since)

SlamBall

Basketball played on trampolines, with body checks. For two glorious seasons on TNN-turned-Spike-TV, guys in helmets launched off spring beds and dunked on each other from ten feet in the air — and every kid who saw it wanted a backyard version immediately.

Video thumbnail — 1997 Surge "Feed the Rush" Drink Commercial
Food 1997–2003

Surge

Coca-Cola's aggressively marketed neon-green citrus soda that positioned itself as the extreme-sports answer to Pepsi's Mountain Dew. Heavy on caffeine and attitude, Surge fueled the mayhem marketing of the late 90s before vanishing from shelves in 2003 — only to surge back after a passionate fan movement brought it to Amazon in 2014.

Video thumbnail — Tony Hawk Lands FIRST-EVER 900 | World of X Games
Trends 1995–present

X Games

ESPN's made-for-TV Olympics of skateboarding, BMX, motocross, and snowboarding. It started as the Extreme Games in Rhode Island in 1995, got its one-letter name in 1996, and became the place where Tony Hawk landed the 900 and Travis Pastrana the double backflip.