Grandfather Reg Reid knew he was on to a good thing when he bolted an old shoe into an aluminium plate and whacked on four lawnmower wheels. The former dairy farmer and self-taught engineer from Matamata watched his grandchildren struggle to master very unstable rollerblades and thought there must be aneasy solution. In a flash of good old-fashioned Kiwi No 8 wire ingenuity, he fashioned a set of skates using old mower wheels. "I put them on grandchild Aana and she scooted off round the fruit trees in the garden and I thought 'I've got it'," Mr Reid said. That was four years ago. Now his original - but crude - prototype has undergone a major transformation to become the Extreme Quad Skates, which he hopes will start a craze. The Skorpion Quad Skates, as they are known, are now a slick unit with a hi-tech plastic foot mould, tough straps and robust wheels with spring suspension. Mr Reid, along with his son, Gary Reid, a product marketing specialist, were in the Western Bay this week filming nine skaters at various locations for a promotional film clip. The footage will to be shown in-store all through Europe when the skates are launched there in June. Some of the footage will also used for television commercials. Mr Reid Jnr said Tauranga and Mount Maunganui had all the terrains needed to show the versatility of quad skates and was the ideal filming location. Skaters aged between 12 and 28 rocketed across the cobblestones in central Tauranga, zipped along boardwalks at Mount Maunganui and went off-road at Mauao. "Not only will they get to see the skates in action, some of the Bay will be seen by plenty of people in Europe," Mr Reid Jnr said. Skorpion Extreme Quad Skates were extremely stable due to a larger wheel size and wider wheelbase than traditional rollerskates or rollerblades. A suspension system provided the skater with directional control and steering, while smoothing out bumpy surfaces such as cobbles, boardwalk and gravel. They would open up uneven surfaces like grass and mountain bike trails to both extreme and not-so-extreme skaters.
