IMAGINE BRANDING: DYLAN JAEB'S DEBUT

BEING A CHILD PRODIGY, CHANGING BOARD SPONSORS & ETHAN FOWLER?

PART ONE | CHOOSE YOUR IDENTITY In 1994, Toy Machine released Live!, a 26-minute full-length video promoting the pre-Thomas Vision™ version of the brand. I like this brief moment in skateboarding where the flip-and-pray skating of the early 90s is over and everyone is figuring it out by focusing on what tricks they do and how they do them. Sub Zero’s “Real Life” comes out in 1994 as well. I’m guessing most of the footage in Live! is from 1993. Jahmal Williams and “Panama” Dan Zimmerman filmed a bunch of tricks indoors at Z.T. Maximus in Boston, so I triangulate that footage as Winter 1993.

A year later, Toy Machine completely remade their brand with a new squad and new video. Led by Jamie Thomas and Ed Templeton, Heavy Metal refocused the brand, but it took a third team reconstruction before the breakthrough video Welcome To Hell would drop in 1996. Then the Chief then turned his clothing company into a board brand and left Toy Machine to start Zero, roughly 18 years before FA essentially did the same thing. History… it does history things.

Live! isn’t held in the same regard as the Toy videos that followed, but it introduced many viewers to a young prodigy named Ethan Fowler. Yes, the once-beloved “style” guy who proved that looking cool didn’t equal being cool. He opens the video skating to Fugazi’s “Great Cop” and later to a Jane’s Addiction demo version of “City.” However, many of the backdrops don’t appear urban. Most of Fowler’s footage is in schoolyards, parking lots, sidewalks, and behind buildings, with some clips filmed in SF. He’s really good, but he’s almost Ethan Fowler, just as Toy Machine wasn’t fully Toy Machine in 1994.

At age 16, Thomas Campbell and Tobin Yelland picked Ethan up in Iowa City on a trip back from New York and took him to San Francisco. According to a Big Brother interview published in March, 1999, Fowler said he was “on really silly amounts of drugs,” back then. I guess he took at a lot of risks or whatever, but it landed him on Ed Templeton’s bloodsucking skateboard companies TV, Television, and finally Toy Machine.

Live! comes out then he’s off Toy Machine and quickly films a part for Stereo’s first video, A Visual Sound and has last part. In his second part of the year, he somehow appears more mature and more assured in his skateboarding. He’s a true “city guy” on Stereo, who were based in San Francisco at the time. There are film photographs of him in a diner. He has a very 90s buzzcut and sideburns combo, smokes cigarettes, and wears a cardigan sweater.

In an on-the-nose moment, he sits on a sidewalk soft and analyzes the sleeve of a record album. Then he skates very well, to the obscure jazz music of Ululation, often wearing a white dress shirt with vertical pinstripes or plain white T-shirts. Later, he drinks coffee and scrawls on a napkin.

Months after being a 411VM montage looking guy on Toy Machine, Ethan Fowler became Ethan Fowler.

Planned or natural, his transformation from “the other Fowler” to retro guy was great branding. Stereo Guy Ethan Fowler set the table for other versions of Ethan , including the Heritage Rocker look with motorcycles and flared jeans that he rode out at the end of his career.

Two Ads Scanned by Chrome Ball Depicting the Fast Evolution of Ethan Fowler. (R) Toy Machine (L) Stereo

PART TWO | THE EVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED Before everyone was invested on Dylan Jaeb’s pivot to Quasi, he had already been doing a lot of other shit… for a decade. Then something happened. At some point in 2025, his IG clips became Must-See-IG.

The Jaebing in our feeds was organic. But it would be kind of awesome if he hired Geese’s PR team and orchestrated all of this with bots or some shit.

While Dylan Jaeb being a PSYOP in 2026 sounds kind of awesome, the reality is that the subtle shift in his skating was intentional.

He Talked To Heckride About This Very Thing In May 2025

As of recently, it feels like you’re trying to break out of the cookie-cutter California perfect spots and have been skating stuff a little more rugged and out of Southern California; I think stuff like that has helped make me not to immediately think of Mike Mo when I see your skating if that makes sense.

DJ: Yeah, I guess I’ve been a bit more careful not to skate stuff that looks super-so-cal. I think I was just skating whatever when I was younger and was into different stuff. It was also a different time when Mike Mo was coming up; people were just trying to do the most insane tricks. I don’t mind getting compared to him (laughs). We do look pretty similar, but I live here, so I’m not sure that I can break out of skating Southern California spots. I’m definitely jealous of New York or places where you can just skate wherever and it looks nice. We got to be careful not to get Palm Trees in the background and shit (laughs).

Let’s go back to go forward.

In 2020, Dylan Jaeb was introduced in a Berrics video as a “16-Year-Old Phenom” from Hawaii. In the video he explains that Jamie Thomas had been flowing him Zero boards since he was 11. The Chief liked and commented on his posts and started sending him boxes. That’s a very modern origin story.

Like Ethan Fowler, Dylan Jaeb had an elder co-sign and things moved quickly. He was on DC, then he wasn’t. He got a bunch of other sponsors. He got on Nike SB and looks right in Blazer Mids. And lot of other stuff probably happened that we aren’t aware of, too.

This man has a lot of footage: 23 credits on SkateVideoSite. But for this exercise, let’s continue to analyze at some recent-ish Jaeb activity leading up to “the video.” In Primitive’s 2024 Am video Daydream, his part starts with archival footage of him attempting—and (predictably) landing—a kickflip off the deck of a quarterpipe while wearing a helmet and a youthful outfit. We get B-roll, then adult Dylan Jaeb does his thing. He skates to the electro-pop of Chromatics’ “I Want Your Love,” a song a lot of people took drugs to in the early 2000s. He wears some button-down shirts and an interesting sweater, but there are also plenty of all-black fits and brown pants. There’s little chance those brown Dickies are a nod to Ethan Fowler. As expected, he shows off his excellent trick selection and does very hard things—he’s joyful and talented, but not showy. He kind of looks like Reese Forbes.

In 2025, Dylan Jaeb a key contributor to Dickies’ Honeymoon full-length. He’s even more awesome in that one and skates to more (mostly) electronic music, this time by Charlotte Gainsbourg—the daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg—and, briefly, to “Sunless” by Loke Rahbek & Frederik Valentin. Some of the tricks are filmed in New York City. His name is rendered in the style of the Jersey Mike’s logo. It’s very slick, although using sub sandwich branding is working class… or middle America-coded.

1 million views and counting and some beautiful stuff | Nike SB QuickStrike

Again, he’s very very good and cemented himself as a new force in skateboarding with this part—someone who’s going to do things and become a lot of people’s favorite skateboarder, especially if he pulls the right levers.

AND HERE IT IS JAEB | DEBUT

After months of gossip, screenshots, and message-board chatter, Quasi officially announced Dylan Jaeb as their newest team rider on April 14, 2024, with a video post and the caption “It’s mowing season.”

A board release and pro announcement followed—but where’s the part? It’s coming, obviously.

Now we have it. While I didn’t “throw my headphones on for the peak experience”—because my tinnitus doesn’t enjoy high-end frequencies so close to my eardrum—I watched JAEB | DEBUT three times in a row on a television screen.

As evidenced in this video by Jacob Polumbo, presentation matters as much as tricks. His skating is even more distilled and refined than before, but it’s still top-shelf shit. Yes, it lived up to the hype. More importantly, Dylan Jaeb, in this context, feels fresh and natural. It’s a new beginning and one that makes sense. Honeymoon Dylan Jaeb wouldn’t have fit on Quasi. I don’t know why, that’s just how it is.

Going from Primitive to Quasi is quite a shift. Also, Quasi means Almost. I never thought about that until today. Both Primitive and Quasi are distinct brands. One could argue they occupy different ends of elite. Primitive’s branding relies heavily on their talented roster construction. Dylan Jaeb fit that. Really good skaters go there and maybe get a gold-foil board. They really owned the DTC model of running a skate brand, before Meta ads were called Meta ads, often collaborating with big-box companies.

*Select Pieces From Primitive x Rick & Morty (2018)

Conversely, Quasi has worked with Robert Pollard/Guided By Voices and, outside of some co-collabs with pro rider Gilbert Crockett and Vans, they’re rarely selling you anything other than Quasi things. Also of note, Jaeb’s new teammate Gilbert once rode for Mystery and Fallen, two brands once under Thomas’ Black Box Distribution.

Quasi’s brand narrative is intentionally loose, but identifiable. They often employ different logos and wordmarks and leave enough room to experiment with board graphics while maintaining cohesion. They push the video medium in interesting ways. Their solo parts are pleasing and interesting without being “art for art’s sake.”

*Uncle Bob’s Quasi Collage Graphic

With each brand passing the ten-year mark, are Primitive and Quasi entering their rebrand stages? Quasi is definitely in a refresh phase, as evidenced recently by Hard Reset, leaning into blood Jon Rowe, Jason Nam, and Cooper Qua. We can assume Brian O’Dwyer will be officially on Quasi soon as well, so that’s heavy.

*Contemplating the future. Photograph by Michael Burnett.

If anyone thought otherwise, JAEB | DEBUT inserts Dylan Jaeb seamlessly into the Quasiverse. The words “finesse” and “curation” have come up often in reactions to JAEB | DEBUT. There’s not a hugely noticeable difference in his actual skating or look, other than his buzzcut and something we’ll mention later. A few folks have noted the presence of more manual-based tricks and less hucking. That’s fair. They’re excellent manuals.

Mostly, JAEB | DEBUT showcases what someone who can do anything, but these little flashes of expression in his flick and motion make add intrigue. He’s not trying to fit on Quasi or jazz-up his tricks. he’s a twenty-something version of himself, developing a his skate language.

Sonically, we’re still operating in the electronic space, albeit with more BPM, via Fuck Buttons and later, the ethereal sounds of Ssalvia. We expect Quasi to bring deeper cuts into their productions and the song choices are an interesting tell.

Yes, this looks like a Quasi video. There’s probably something to say about frame rates or whatever, but this seven-and-a-half-minute edit is the perfect container for Dylan Jaeb’s high-level skateboarding without being jarring. There’s day and night footage, an assortment of spots, found footage, animations, reactions, guest clips, civilians—and, of course, the ender.

The ender: a fakie kickflip “over the top rope” at Rincon Middle School in Escondito, California (as seen on the cover of Thrasher Magazine), shown three times—two documenting a moment of humility, where Dylan Jaeb seems to surprise even himself. In a white button-down shirt. And a buzzcut. Roll credits

(Ethan Fowler, Not Dylan Jaeb)

*The end of the ender as seen in JAEB | DEBUT.

His boards and a poster are now available. The “Window” board bears his surname and a fried head. His “Debut” model has a fried ascending body, geometric patterns, and a pixelated expressive symbol that looks like a vaporwave Mercedes Benz logo. Dylan Jaeb is on Quasi and a few days in, it feels like he’s always been on Quasi.

As Fusili Grind noted in a recent livestream (subscribe to his channel), “Dylan Jaeb is deftly shaking off his Mike Mo.” Exciting stuff—let’s just hope he never has a rocker phase.

“Wipe the last haole the fuck off our turf!”