Morey Boogie: the assembly line Roosevelt Street, Carlsbad, California | Photo: Craig Libuse

The original Morey Boogie was launched by Morey Boogie & Company in the 1970s from its original and iconic headquarters in Carlsbad, California.

In its early days, the water sports company founded by Tom Morey produced a series of instructions, manuals, and assembly tutorials on how to get the world's first bodyboard in the waves.

The world was analog. It was the time of the print era.

Morey Boogie's art and marketing guru, Craig Libuse, later fine-tuned, improved, developed, and designed additional promotional media, including several magazine ads.

The following instructions manual helped boogie-boarding pioneers take care, know their wave-riding craft's construction characteristics, and learn how to "use" the board in the surf.

"The Tom Morey and Company script logo on the letterhead was produced using Letraset stick down type in a font called Diana Script," underlines Libuse.

"The rest of the body copy was done by Tom on a regular typewriter. This was way before computer fonts. There was no backspace key - just whiteout."

Here's an easy-to-read, edited transcription of the original document included in every new bodyboard. The original verbatim words can be found in the picture below.

Tom Morey, circa 1971: the original boogie board only weighed three pounds | Photo: Morey Family

Care

The smooth skins are tough, but dragging the boogie tends to sand off the smoothness.

Rinse boogie off occasionally.

Keep it in the shade when you can - cool. Store heavy stuff elsewhere, not atop the boogie.

Concept

Boogie wave developed with these thoughts in mind:

Riding the wave rather than the board.

Riding low for intimate control for reduced wind resistance and for getting inside the wave.

Using more of your body most of the time, being comfortable, and being able to surf with oil on your body.

Oil keeps your skin protected, your body thru the water, and against the boogie, and lets your body make natural vitamin D in the sunlight.

Good to use in the snow, behind a speed boat, and for skimming in the shallows.

Good thing to use for diving, carry gear, and catch - immediately easy to use.

Kids, ma, pa: take worry out of surfing. No worry about getting hurt with it (or hurting someone else, or getting tossed out of the swimming area by the lifeguard, or losing it).

Easy to keep hold of.

Twenty guys booging on the same wave bounding off each other fun! Pump air beneath it for speed, jump over guys in your way, make jump turns in the air, feel the waves power and flow directly.

You are the stringer adjusting the rocker as you feel it.

Surf easily over shallow reefs, urchins, coral, etc.

Easy to store - use a cushion/float.

The boogie accomplishes all of the above.

Materials

Your boogie is made from the finest and most durable materials available, polyethylene foam. Its total volume is over 5200cc, yet it weighs only 3 lbs (2300cc and just 1 1/2 lbs)!

The tough dimpled skins are permanently thermo-welded to the rugged, flexible hand-shaped closed cell foam core, or in other words, it cannot sink even if it does rip or gets a puncture.

Repairs can be made easily and cheaply with contact adhesive cement.

Boogie Shape and How to Use It

The rocker helps prevent pearling; the vacuum track rails allow you to zip tightly across the wave, even when it is quite steep.

Normal riding is done prone with both hands clasped to the front for control.

Use swim fins for maximum control and speed. Kick mostly and paddle some.

Take off well back bending nose down to capture juice directly, then scoot forward some and onto inside rail for a turn.

Bend it, warp it, twist it. Experiment! No one yet knows what can be done.

Turn with your elbows, knees, hips, etc.

When pushing thru waves, point the nose into the center of the foam, hold arms stiff, and be lifted quickly upon the soup.

All this depending, you know, on what's going on.

Like, try every which way, scooting backward, forward, side to side, bending it at time almost double.

Also, you know, eventually, you're going to wear the thing out, so be reasonable.

Meanwhile, enjoy it, enjoy it, enjoy it! Designed for surf from 6 inches to as huge as your imagination and guts allow.

Morey Boogie: the original bodyboard user manual

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