Wikia

Rafe: "Hey McFly you bojo! Those boards don't work on water!"

Whitey: "Unless you got POWAH! Hahahah..."

A hoverboard was similar in appearance to a skateboard but underwent a hover conversion. They were manufactured for all age ranges by different companies. Mattel made a pink-colored model for young girls. Other companies made more aggressive boards, that were used by gangs in some instances, including the No Tech series and the Pit Bull, a rocket-fired board with three attachments for other riders on similar boards. Another model was the Rising Sun.

Hoverboards worked similarly in principal to skateboards in that they needed momentum by the rider and most would become useless in terrain not suited for them, i.e water, ice, other low traction surfaces, save for the more powerful Pit Bull model.

Behind the scenes

"Now we've said it before, but I'm gonna say it again: kids, hoverboards are not real."

—Bob Gale in Part II commentary

Robert Zemeckis joked in an interview^[1]that hoverboards were real – causing a frenzy amongst fans looking for the real thing in local toy stores, eventually having to retract his joke and explain that hoverboards did not exist.

The hoverboard effect was achieved by supporting the actors on wires (which were digitally erased in post-production) and strapping the hoverboard prop to their feet. The actors had to pretend to be standing on the board, when in fact it was they who were holding the board up. Also, some scenes had the hoverboard mounted on a pole attached to a truck while the actor was in a harness.

Real-world science

Although there was a big demand for hoverboards, realistically they cannot be invented and sold within two years as scientific research is a long while from synthesizing a room-temperature superconductor that would allow objects to float one foot above the surface.