rocky mountain decals

Last weekend I was visiting a friend and as we toured his collection, a Rocky Mountain Vertex frame hanging on the wall caught my eye. The decals on that frame blew my mind, because I saw something I had never seen before...

This thing that blew my mind, had never been noticed by my friend either. We are both unabashed Rocky fanbois. I personally could not put a number on the amount of time I've spent just looking at Rockys. But there, for the first time, I saw those little hooks on the bottom of the letters. My '98 Pipeline here for reference.

I simply couldn't understand how in 26 years of gazing upon Rocky Mountains from the 1998 model year, that I had never seen those little hooks.

When we saw this, we immediately started running around his basement, looking at every other '98 he had. 

It didn't take long for me to realize that there had been way more changes to their decals than I realized.

The early 90's was when I found Rocky Mountain, so the style of decal they used from 1990 to 1998 is what I picture when someone says 'Rocky Mountain.' Prior to 1990 - like my '88 Avalanche (upper left) - the script was thinner, and hard to read from a distance. But, in 1990 they changed to a bolder script that nearly took up the entire downtube.  This for me is the classic Rocky look, and it was a look that I thought was unchanged from 1990 to 1998.

But... I was wrong. There have been a few subtle changes between '90 and '98 that I had missed. 

1990 to 1994 - as seen on the red Metro, white Blizzard, and blue Summit Max pics - the drop shadow was down and to the rear of the bike, and was sans serif block letters. 1993 featured something I always thought was really cool; each bike had its own special look for its name. Equipe, Blizzard, Hammer - whatever it was, it was unique to the bike. This'll be a topic for another post most likely.

1995 to 1996 - here we have a change in the drop shadow. It's now down and to the front of the bike, as on the green Altitude picture. Also there's a little gap between the main letter and the drop shadow. I feel like there should be a term for that, but I don't know if there is. Also in 1996 there was the 15th anniversary edition logo, which are some of the most sought after Rockys I'd say.

1997 to 1998 - they go back now to the drop shadow going to the back of the bike, and we see that little hooks on any letter that isn't round on the bottom, as seen on the black Hammer and purple Pipeline pictures. I guess maybe I saw this subconsciously, because they always looked different - better somehow - but I never saw those hooks until now. 

One more change to note - in 1994, the HAMMER became the hammer, BLIZZARD became the blizzard, etc. It's like they used '93 with the custom name plates to transition from upper case to lower.