- Duncan Campbell, test-riding the very first Bing-made Bonzer, circa 1973. Photo: Craig Fineman….Malcolm and Duncan Campbell, below.
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our new series, “By Design” with Sam George that examines the genius, and sometimes the mystery, of surfing’s storied design history. Sam has been writing about surfing for more than three decades and is the former Editor-in-Chief of SURFER magazine. He won an Emmy for his work on the 30 for 30 documentary, Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau. Today, Sam looks at the Bonzer.
On October 27, 1975, a relatively unknown rock musician from New Jersey found himself featured concurrently on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines, the nation’s two most prominent weekly news publications. An auspicious debut, to be sure, and Bruce Springsteen more than proved he was born to run, still making music and filling concert seats almost 50 years later.
Although not as widely documented, surfing has a parallel story, its point of origin being the summer of 1973, when Malcolm and Duncan Campbell, two completely unknown young surfers from Oxnard, California, were prominently featured in issues of both SURFER and SURFING magazines at the same time, debuting a wildly radical new surfboard design. And much like “The Boss,” a half century later they’re still at it, not only continuing to refine, but to tirelessly champion the board design they called the “Bonzer.”
“We were young and excited back then,” says Malcolm Campbell today, thinking back on how he and his brother were thrust into the limelight in such spectacular style. “And maybe we came across as a little more brash than our regular selves. But for us it really was all about the design. And those articles meant that the design was getting international recognition. That was the main thing for us.”
Flash back to the early 1970s and picture two young California beach kids, growing up along the socially isolated Ventura County beaches, yet enamored with the surfing and surfboard designs coming out of Australia at the time.
“We’d only been surfing and building our own boards for a couple of years,” remembers Malcolm. “And were heavily influenced by Australian’s super short boards, like six feet and below, down to 5’6”. Trouble was, in the waves that we were surfing we liked the shortness, but with the wider tails there was no stability or drive. So we started thinking about what we could do to make the boards more versatile in waves with size and punch.”
Prompted by their father, an avid sailor, the brothers studiously began poring over books about sailboat hull design and hydrodynamic theory, eventually coming across an early 20th century volume depicting a twin-keeled sailing vessel.
“This particular boat had twin keels, placed off center, forward of the centerboard and angled outward,” says Malcolm. “And that really got us to thinking about how that design might provide the drive and edge control we were after in our surfboards.”
In other words, a very bright light bulb flicked on. The next stubby little board that emerged from the boy’s messy garage featured twin keels, single foiled, with a 10-inch base, each angling out toward the rail and placed forward of the center fin. Looking onto their creation — the first three-fin surfboard either had ever seen — they declared it downright “bonzer,” an Aussie slang term translating roughly to “bitchin.”
“On the first wave, we could tell right away that it worked,” Malcolm recalls. “Especially compared to the single fins of the same period. The drive and edge control were there, and we realized at once that we were on to something.”
So what did the Bonzer Brothers do? Keep in mind, they were operating in what during the early 1970s constituted a black hole of progressive surfing: the heavily, often dangerously localized Ventura County beach breaks. But did they stay true to the code, sharing their innovation with the “locals only” who surfed between the tribal boundaries of Point Mugu and the Ventura Harbor?
“Our dad worked in publishing, one of the founders of Road and Track magazine,” says Duncan. “And he told us that it was common practice for designers to contact the magazine and present their innovation for consideration. But we weren’t sure if it worked that way in the surfing world. So…”
“We sent letters to various California surfboard manufacturers, introducing the Bonzer,” says Malcolm. “We felt it was a revolutionary design, and that we had a responsibility to push the thing forward. And never heard back from a single one. Except Bing.”
As in Hermosa Beach’s Bing Copeland, the widely respected — and open-minded — South Bay shaper and manufacturer, who saw something in the Bonzer that caught his attention.
“Bing invited us down to show him what we’d been working on,” Malcolm recalls with a laugh. “So we drove down to the factory.”
“And you can imagine what that was like?” says Duncan. “A couple Oxnardians driving down to the South Bay? Considering the time period, we might as well have been going to North Vietnam.”
“And at that point we had never even seen a professionally manufactured surfboard,” adds Malcolm. “So you can imagine how embarrassed we were with our garage shaped and glassed boards. I’m sure at first they were probably going, ‘Are you kidding?’ But we also had Super-8 film of the boards being ridden and that’s what did it. As poorly as they were made, the footage showed that the boards were working. So Bing and Mike Eaton said they’d shape a few with our input and give them out to their team riders.”
That was in March of 1973. By the summer time, full-page Bing Bonzer ads were up and running, augmenting the two major surf magazine articles featuring the Campbells and their radical new design. Both stories expounded the Bonzer’s unique configuration of bottom concaves and side keels, dropping arcane terms like “Venturi effect” and Bernoulli’s Principle to describe the design’s noticeable increase in speed and drive. The marketing campaign alone was one of the most concerted efforts of the early 1970s, Bing Surfboards going all-out in its effort to convince surfers that the Bonzer was, in fact, bonzer.
And then…not much really happened. At least not so far as mainstream acceptance was concerned. Perhaps period surfers were scared of the board’s bizarre appearance, especially compared to the standard, unchallenging single-fin pintails offered by the majority of the period’s manufacturers. Maybe wings and stings were as much innovation as the conservative ‘70s surfing collective could handle. But in any case, despite a hefty commitment from Bing, resulting in what would have to be described as a small but dedicated cult following, the Bonzer never really broke into the big time.
While disappointing, this apparent indifference deterred the Bonzer Bros not one bit. Years passed into decades, other designs came and went (think the Sting), others came and never left; there have been low points, like during the late 1970s, early ‘80s, when the updated twin fin, and then the Thruster, were afforded multi-fin provenance. There have been high points, like ringing endorsements in a later era from top pros like Brad Gerlach and Taylor Knox; major props from the Style Council in some of Chris Malloy’s cool movies. And one could point to a current renaissance that has seen an entirely new generation of open-minded young surfers finding in the Bonzer the ultimate retro board — one that actually works. Yet through it all, the ups, downs and in-betweens, Malcolm and Duncan have maintained a commitment to their singular design.
“Right from the beginning the Bonzer showed that we really had something,” says Malcolm. “Between then and now we’ve remained, well, maniacally focused on the design in what has become a lifetime’s pursuit. We weren’t interested in just making more surfboards. We wanted to push the evolution of surfboard designs forward. And I think we’ve done that.”
No argument there. Consider that in that very first letter written to Bing Copeland back in 1973, the then unknown brothers asserted with complete confidence that their radical, three-fin Bonzer design was exactly seven years ahead of its time. And exactly seven years later, Simon Anderson introduced the Thruster.
That’s downright bonzer.
Editor’s Note: The October 2023 Boardroom Show is honoring the Bonzer in its annual “Best Of Show Shape-Off” event, free to enter and open to any boardbuilder worldwide, with cash and prizes totaling $3,500. Prospective shapers go to surfboardshow.com for entry info.
