Transworld Surf ’09 Gear Guide
I bought the Transworld Surf ’09 Gear Guide in hopes of learning a lot about the new products that are available this year. After scanning through it I was pretty disappointed. There are a ton of products inside the Transworld Surf ’09 Gear Guide, but not much is said about any of the products that would help me as a consumer decide what is best for me. On the cover page of this surf magazine, it says that it contains guides to 169 surfboards, 172 boardshorts, 59 wetsuits, and 196 accessories. You open it up thinking that it will be great, and very helpful to deciding what gear to get this year, but then find that there isn’t much said about any of the products.
I broke the products in this magazine up into a couple of different categories to explain how useful the Transworld Surf ’09 Gear Guide is to the consumer. The first group basically doesn’t help you with purchase decisions at all. It shows you a picture of the product, then tells you the brand, name of the product, price, and website. This helps Transworld to cover tons of products, but leaves the reader having to do their own research to figure out what products they want to buy. Items with this type of review include traction pads, sunscreen, wax, tide watches, fins, board bags, boardshorts, wetsuits, sandals, and eyewear. Maybe for a lot of these products there isn’t much that needs to be said, but I know for products like tide watches, fins, boardshorts and wetsuits, I would like to know some of the technology behind the new ’09 products.
The surfboards in this magazine make up the next group of products, and Transworld Surf did a little better on this section. On top of the information given in the last group, they also tell you the height, width, and thickness of each board. To any even slightly experienced surfer, this should be all you need in looking at surfboards and knowing which ones will work best for you. This section contains categories of surfboards including shortboards, grovelers (funboards or boards like retro twins for smaller surf), step-ups, catch surf foam boards, longboards, Stand-Up Paddle boards, and Guns. With the picture and the simple information given, this section should help you with your decisions for boards this year.
The last group I put together contains the most useful information and product reviews, and it is also the smallest. It contains a two page spread on Proctor Surfboards, with reviews and information on 18 of their boards. Very useful stuff if you are interested in purchasing one. There is also a review on Stretch Surfboards and the epoxy technology used to build them. The review is very good, and tells you about everything you need to know about a Stretch Surfboard. Last of all, there are a few accessories in the back of this issue of Transworld Surf that get a good amount of attention, providing readers with good information.
What I think is one of the coolest parts of the Transworld Surf ’09 Gear Guide is the 12 pro surfers’ profiles spread throughout the issue that tell you what the pro’s prefer to use for surfing, travel and style. The surfers who are spotlighted are C.J. Hobgood, Kelly Slater, Dustin Barca, Dane Reynolds, Aaron Cormican, Coco Ho, Benji Weatherley, Bruce Irons, Gabe Kling, Warren Smith, Shane Dorian, Taylor Knox. These guys have experienced a lot of different products throughout their careers, and have some good advice to share.
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