Were Heroin the first company to make egg shaped decks?
No way. Eggs/ footballs were a wonderful stop over on the way to popsicles in the early 90s. I’m pretty sure other companies reintroduced them before or around the same time as Heroin. The Huffer for instance. Heroin have certainly gone above and beyond with the variations and celebrations of this most treasured skateboard shape though.
There's a nice little history recap on Heroin's site. http://www.heroinskateboarding.com/blog/2020/10/20/egg-history The first Shimizu egg was in 2016, and then it built up from there. Not sure when the first Huffer came out, but it was around the same time I think, maybe slightly later. Of course, these are all just rehashes of that brief window of egg shapes in the early 90s. Can't remember anyone else really doing it in earnest before 2016 tho.
Heroin have certainly made the biggest name for the "egg shaped board" in recent years, but I think 1992 - 1993 was the main time for those sort of shapes, as said above. I had a board from around 1992 from The Firm, which was to me one of the most influential shapes I had skated, which took me from 80s squared tail ramp skating to 90s street and mini tech skating and I feel like that was the single most progressive and fun board I had.
Things got very tight from about 1994 onwards, so there was minimal change and interest in "shaped boards" for the majority of the industry for a long time after that, but some people still made different boards, which included egg shapes or punk points or whatever else.
From my post, on the Huffer shape in this graphic which may have come out around 2008 - 2009 going by past catalogs and info, which at the time was so weird it was interesting, but I just couldn't set it up at the time, but being on clearance and seeing something different, I thought I would give it a shot.
Post:
I bought this deck a long time ago, maybe around 2010 from a clearance bin in Lodown, a Sydney skate shop and sat on it for a while, then passed it on to someone in need, who skated it for quite a while before it was retired and came back to me. It was going to go on the board wall, but then when I bought the trucks from eBay last year, I set it back up with some of my old wheels from maybe 2005 or so.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJ77M1klTQh/