By the end of the 1940s, Southern California surfboard builders were engaged in a quest for better equipment—boards that would be easy to paddle and catch waves on, and be more maneuverable. They were beginning to understand how changes in outlines, bottom contours, rocker and rails could dramatically alter a board’s performance. As fiberglass and balsa wood became commercially available, surfboard builders quickly adopted them as the new standard in materials. Balsa was easier to shape than redwood and once wrapped in fiberglass, much lighter at 30 - 35 pounds.

Santa Monica-based Joe Quigg turned out a series of such boards in the late ’40s that were intended for the small but growing group of female surfers at nearby Malibu. “It helped the girls to leave the tails wide,” recalls Quigg. “I’d put what I called easy-rider rocker in them. They were real easy to ride. A lot of girls learned how to surf on those boards in just a few months.”

But it was not just the women who appreciated the lighter, better performing boards. Many of the men borrowed them and found that they too enjoyed the way they rode, opening a new chapter in surfing style known as “hot-dogging,” characterized by snappy turns, “walking the board” and noserides that were impossible on the clunky planks and hollow boards of earlier years.

In July 1950 a group of Malibu surfers traveled south to San Diego’s Windansea for a Fourth of July weekend surfing contest—and they took their new “Malibu” boards with them. Recalls Quigg: “This local guy, Art Cunningham, sees our boards, which had rocker, and were curvy, and were yellowish, and he says, ‘Wow, look at those potato chips.’”

Known thereafter as Malibu Chips, the balsa and fiberglass boards were a milestone in board design and a turning point in the evolution of surfing performance.