Considering that hoverboards are everywhere you turn right now, it is no surprise to find them appearing in pop culture – especially when you consider the raft of famous names who own hoverboards ranging from Jamie Foxx through to Lily Allen and Justin Bieber.
Most hoverboard owners are young and as such, more likely to use social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. These platforms are awash with hoverboard memes and funny videos. Type in ‘falling off a hoverboard’ and you’ll be greeted by hundreds of options to watch. Be warned, this could take hours from your day!
Back in 2015, Brooklyn Beckham posted a video of himself doing a double spin on a hoverboard on Instagram and got more than 300,000 likes for his efforts. Chris Brown enjoys riding around hotel corridors on a hoverboard and Wiz Khalifa has ridden onto the stage at a gig.
Katy Perry has been filmed taking a tumble from a hoverboard as has Mike Tyson, who’s falling off a hoverboard video went viral. Real Housewives of Melbourne star Gamble Breaux was filmed coming off her hoverboard while holding a glass of wine! We can report that the wine was unharmed.
Hoverboards have made it into the metaverse too, with Jadu partnering with Grimes, Lewis Hamilton and Snoop Dogg to create a range of NFTs, some of which fetched upwards of $50,000.
Music has also been the perfect marriage for hoverboard collaboration. There’s been a Justin Bieber hoverboard music video. What Do You Mean became the words first hoverboard dance You Tube video. Filmed in a massive warehouse and directed by David Moore it features five hoverboarders executing a pretty cool dance routine.
Another artist, JME, made a music video with hoverboards called Test Me. In America, Young Thug feature a scene with a hoverboard being ridden in a basketball court and Famous dex wrote a song about life on a hoverboard.
The nation’s obsession with hoverboards can be traced back to the 2015 hoverboard movie Back to the Future, where Marty McFly gets to ride a real floating hoverboard in the year 2015. Such a thing still doesn’t exist even though there have been numerous attempts to make one. In reality, McFly’s Lenticular Mattel Hoverboard didn’t float, it was all down to special effects, however, the prop that was used to film those scenes sold at auction for £375,000 in 2021.
It appeared in the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II and at the time, director Robert Zemeckis said that the hoverboard was the real deal. This was fabricated, but turned out to be a great piece of PR and prompted investors to pump money into creating a floating hoverboard.
In books, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw sees Greg Heffley order a hoverboard, which he had to build himself and got an industrial strength twin-turbine engine to power it up and in The Uglies Series, hoverboards are mentioned regularly as a mode of personal transportation.