Revisiting The Brief Reign Of The Razor Scooter

Who was the man responsible from bringing these tween chariots to the streets of America, and loosing a swarm of speedy, SoBe-fueled youth on the sidewalks? That would be the alliterative entrepreneur Carlton Calvin. Now, he didn't invent the foldable scooters himself. There were no late nights in the workshop centered among scattered hinges and polyurethane scraps. The scooter was invented by, depending on who you ask, a banker named Wim Oubuter or a man named Gino Tsai, and produced by a Taiwanese company that was enjoying success in its own right, with their hybrid toy and travel tool becoming a trend in Tokyo. This attracted the eye of the Los Angeles Times, and, in turn, Mr. Calvin.

He brought the company to the states, calling his new branch Razor USA. His eye for products proved apt, as the Razor scooter would take over the country soon after launching in 2000. Approximately a million scooters were being constructed and shipped duly off to retailers a month. An appetite that hadn't existed mere months earlier now fueled an endlessly hungry, gaping maw that consumed with abandon. No foot was left unscootered, whether by a Razor or by a substitute produced by the questionable but undeniably nimble businesses that exist to knock off what's hot and provide an undercut to a gluttonous market.

The scooters themselves started to evolve and see additions and special models. A model with a wheelie bar was added, for an easy way for aspiring tricksters to smack their head against the pavement and send their scooter rocketing into a parked car in one smooth motion. Some models included a spark bar on the brake, to appeal to the pyromaniac heart that beats inside every 14-year-old boy. There even emerged a passionate group of kids developing and performing Razor tricks. Odds are you remember the kid at your school who could do a tailwhip on a Razor scooter, almost as distinctly as you remember the sharp, horizontal, crunching pain of a Razor footbed slamming into the front of your shin when you attempted one yourself.