Popwar emerged around 2002 via New Deal Skateboards. New Deal, founded around 1990, had its heyday in the 90s but began losing momentum by the turn of the century. Their last video, 7 Year Glitch, released in 2002, failed to make the impact they hoped for. Rather than going out of business, New Deal underwent a rebranding and restructuring. The name itself seemed to hold some riders back, and kids weren’t buying it anymore.

Giant Distribution, recognizing the need for change, decided to shut down New Deal and create a new brand. They assembled a team featuring skaters including: Chad Bartie, Ricky Oyola, Lincoln Ueda, Fabrizio Santos, and Ryan Johnson. However, not everyone from New Deal made the switch. Enter Cairo Foster, who had a different path. He’d been riding for Real Skateboards but wanted to start his own company. After discussions with Giant, they launched a brand initially called Populis, which later morphed into Popwar.

Within a few months, Popwar realized they needed a more defined focus. This decision proved crucial, especially considering the fate of another brand called Seek, which failed partly due to poor focus and art direction. Yogi Proctor, a graphic designer from Tum Yeto and TransWorld SNOWboarding, joined forces with Popwar to develop their visual identity.

After changes in staff and then owners, Popwar sadly faded away. A comment on the slap forum about what happened to Popwar?:

"When Popwar and other Giant Dist. business were booming, Popwar was sold to another company around 2005 and that is when things started to go south... Original artist and creator for Popwar (Yogi Proctor) and Winston Tseng left the company, and the art directiion was taken over by Mike Hiskey... Popwar ceased activitity around Summer 2007... Mike Hiskey along with other guys, tried to buy Popwar, but because of the financial crisis and bad management, the new owners owned a lot of money to the company manufacturing the boards, that is PS Stix. So buying the name would mean inheriting the debts... so they refused the idea and created Hype! Skateboards, that is why the art direction and some of their riders were from Popwar... Hype! followed then its own path...

Fast forward to 2011... which is when Utah guy comes up in the pic. He licensed out the Popwar brand name to Professor Schmitt, who had won the brand name in a lawsuit settlement with the Popwar owners who owned him money... So this guy from Salt Lake tries to relaunch the brand, locally first, and then nationwide... he creates 6 boards, 5 were replicas of old graphics and 1 was a new original graphic... After some financial problems, he can no longer keep the brand alive and closes shop after 6 months."

Popwar Skateboarding Videos:

Popwar - Video Hype Teaser Skateboard Video

Popwar - Video Hype Teaser 2 Skateboard Video

The Rise, Fall and Return of Popwar!

"Popwar was a really popular brand that came up around 2002. They were really popular, and were even filming a video. Next thing you know, they were gone. What happened to them? What happened to the video? Did they really relaunch the brand?"

"Thank you for keeping (the more recent) skate history alive. I grew up in this era of skateboarding, and holds the most nostalgia for me. Side note, I have a Populis board autographed by Kenny Reed, it's numbered too. Got it a few years back off an eBay auction. I'm happy I own a bit of skate history."

"I loved Popwar back in the day, but they were always hard to find in shops. That Cairo Foster slick drops was one of the best decks I've ever skated."