RocketSkates let you zip along the sidewalk at a top speed of 12 MPH

Not trying to be rude, but why is engadget linked here instead of the actual KickStarter? I can&#x27;t be the only one who hates struggling to find a source link on most news sites? Wouldn&#x27;t it be more useful to just link to the KickStarter?<p>Edit: Ok so engadgets source links are easy to find but still why not just link to the KickStarter?

As a person that&#x27;s bought an electric skateboard in the past and a lot of other dumb stuff, I feel like I have a decent grasp on the target market here... but I couldn&#x27;t buy one of these, they just look so dorky. It&#x27;s like wearing cement shoes or something. Way too bulky and garish. And the marketing video.. ugh. Like the shirtless dude and the weird slow-mo cuts and the obvious pandering to a male audience? It just gives off a very desperate vibe. If they have to go to such great lengths to make it seem &quot;cool&quot; you can be almost assured they realize exactly how uncool it looks.<p>The other thing is, your target market is basically college students to start with (probably), or kids. 400+ is out of their range. I think you can get away with cheap&#x2F;functional+dorky (regular skates), or expensive+cool, but you can&#x27;t do expensive+dorky (segway territory).

These look neat and they made a great kickstarter video. They know who&#x27;s going to want those (25 - 30 something guys) and they made sure to have lots of shots of cute girls using the skates. I watched the whole thing ;) It was also fun to see my home town of Pasadena all over that video. Now I&#x27;m homesick. Good luck to you guys - they do look genuinely fun!

I feel like I&#x27;ll see these in SkyMall some day.

This is kind of neat, but it negates one of the great benefits of skating (or walking, or running, or bicycling) which is exercise.

Speaking of the actual <i>skates</i>. The most real are probably <a href="http://boostedboards.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;boostedboards.com</a>. There are almost here it seems.

I think this is a very interesting concept, but stylistically speaking, they are so ugly.

I&#x27;m not too fond of the design of these things. They look like some kids toy.

Seems like a neat idea if you live in a place with well-built roads. As a resident of Michigan, where the roads typically consist of more pothole than road, this would be useless at best and dangerous at worst.<p>Still waiting for the Kickstarter that brings us the &#x27;spokewheels&#x27; from Snowcrash (not sure if that&#x27;s the actual name, it&#x27;s been a few years since I&#x27;ve read it). Something that can deal with potholes and road debris alike would be a godsend.

If I wore these, I&#x27;d have to kick my own ass.

I totally want a pair of these for &quot;commuting&quot; to work! Sure they&#x27;re a little chunky, but I think they&#x27;ve achieved something remarkable anyway. Besides which it simply takes space for batteries and motors and all the gizmos and what have you. I&#x27;m sold. I think these will be a big hit if they work as advertised.

That video pitch may be the beginning of the end of Kickstarter...these wheelie things are not a safe, practical product and anyone who buys this wheeliebarrow of overpromises will be disappointed. Is it possible to short a Kickstarter project...maybe that&#x27;s a Kickestarter project I should launch!

This reminds me of the hover boots from the Zelda: Ocarina of Time game for Nintendo 64. Fun memories! I see a lot of comments concerning the product&#x27;s ugliness. But, hey, not every product has to be subtle and elegant. Some consumers may embrace the over-the-top, video game-like appearance.

This guy beat them to it: <a href="http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/18n331wztgzcyjpg.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.kinja-img.com&#x2F;gawker-media&#x2F;image&#x2F;upload&#x2F;18n331wztgz...</a>

Why does everything these days need an &quot;app&quot; with &quot;games&quot; or other gimmicks?<p>Boosted Boards focus on building an amazing electric longboard is much more appealing to me.

The angry masculine look of these isn&#x27;t my style but I really like the idea. A 10 mile range is much better than I expected. I could see these becoming quite popular on college campuses.<p>I don&#x27;t know about &quot;zipping along the sidewalk&quot; at 12mph -- that seems kind of rude anywhere there are pedestrians traveling at more pedestrian speeds. There is also an interesting gray area as far as traffic laws.

These look like foot-sized Segways.

Based on the name, I was expecting something much more Wile E. Coyote than this. Disappointed.

the founder was a teenager in 198x - that explains &quot;Back to the Future 2&quot; design, etc. As another 40+ years old a&amp;&amp; i&#x27;d personally feel strange trying to push a &quot;cool and fun&quot; thing to the 20+ years olds. (Even such an unquestionably cool, in my mind, thing as a million bucks is far from being cool for these youngsters :).<p>Wrt. all these new devices, mostly electrical - they are victims of &quot;uncanny valley&quot; effect - unmoving&#x2F;freezed human body at speeds less than 20mph looks spooky. Even electric bicycles look this way.

I hope they come with a helmet.

More kickstarter Vaporware.

Can&#x27;t wait for sidewalk&#x2F;bikelane wars over this. Too fast for the sidewalk with people walking. Will cyclists give up there precious bike lane space?