Trip Forman: Welcome to the REAL Board Loft. I'm Trip Forman, and today we're going to be talking about the Lost LayZToy II. We'll call it the LayZBoy 2 because that's what it really is, and we can say that now, but we can't say it long term because probably some people would get upset. But it's really the LayZBoy 2. On the board, it says LayZToy, so hopefully that clears up any confusion: LayZToy 2, LayZBoy 2.
All right, so LayZBoy 2. The LayZBoy 1 was probably—not even probably—definitely one of our best-selling boards, especially for the long haul. The OG LayZBoy was at REAL four, five, six years and a consistent performer in the Board Loft. Throughout the course of that board being in production with Lost, it was way ahead of its time. That board was way ahead of all of the retro boards blowing up, the mid-lengths, and the super easy-to-ride boards that are all happening now. That board was several years before that, so it makes sense to come out with a second rendition of it.
Looking at the LayZToy 2, which is the LayZBoy 2, a lot of the things came out through the refinements of the original LayZBoy, meaning really foiling out the rails more, eking out a little bit more performance out of the board. Keeping all the super easy characteristics of the board but giving it a little bit more performance. A lot of it was just in the rail shape, really bringing the rails down, and then also adding this diamond tail into the board just to loosen it up a little bit, give it a little bit more break off the tail.
Why is this style of board, or why is the LayZToy, so popular? I would say the number one thing is that it stokes out the widest group of surfers. You can take anything from a mid-twenties resort-wear hipster like Jeffrey O'Neill all the way to myself or Matt Biolos or our kids. You could take somebody progressing off of a longboard to their first shortboard. Any of those surfers are going to like this board.
I'm going to say probably the number one reason is because of how big the sweet spot is on the board, where you could stand on the board. You could literally stand on this board, which is a 6'2", from about here. Actually, you could probably stand on the board anywhere where that carbon strip is on the deck, so from here all the way to here, and it's going to work.
Normally on a shortboard, like on a pointy-nose shortboard, you have to stand here and here, and that's it. If you're here, the board just comes to a screeching halt. By having that really long sweet spot, you could stand up by accident in the wrong place, and you could also have it be a style or a functional thing, like where you're trimming from the center of the board or you're cheater fiving from the front of the board, and the board's still going to be going and flying down the line. The sweet spot is really open on this board, so an open sweet spot, a really elongated sweet spot.
The other thing is how easily it catches waves. With the flatter rocker and the wider tail, it gets pushed into waves really easily, and it also has a lot of speed at takeoff and a lot of glide through the flat spots. Having the extra volume and not a super concave bottom, just some subtle concaves and V, allows the board to really carry a lot of speed.
The next reason that a lot of people like this board is that the LayZBoy is open to being ridden at a lot of different volumes. You could ride it almost down to your shortboard performance volume. I wouldn't ride it that small because it doesn't have the concaves to float it super high in the water at a really, really low volume. But you can ride it a little bit more than your performance shortboard, your grovel volume, and then you could supersize. You could basically ride it as big as you want.
That's another reason that people really like this board: it's really hard to buy the wrong size. Myself, I can ride this board 5'10" all the way up to as big as they make them, up to 7'2", and I'm going to like each one of those boards, probably for a different characteristic of that board. But they're all going to work. If I were to get a concave shortboard and try and ride it through that range of sizes, it definitely wouldn't work as it got bigger because it would really start overpowering the surfer.
So, the big sweet spot and your ability to have a bunch of different sizes that work. I always tell people on this board, especially if you're using this board to progress your skills, if you're between two sizes, it's okay to pick the bigger size. The extra volume really doesn't hurt this board. It's going to help you get more waves, and it's going to help you on the super small stuff and then also the bigger stuff, scraping into bigger waves.
For fin setups on this board, they're all equipped as a five-fin setup. This board has FCS II plugs. This is the board I was using, and the two fin sets that I go to on this board—in this board, I was using the FCS II split keels, the Mayhem split keels. If it was Futures, you could also use the Controllers.
Those fins are basically like a keel fin split in half, and that's going to give you the most down-the-line linear drive for creating speed. In soft surf or surf that's bending away from you, or if you basically just need some additional help generating speed, that's going to be the fastest down-the-line fin.
If you want to loosen the board up noticeably and give up a little bit of that down-the-line drive in exchange for the ability to break the line on turns, then just going with a standard Mayhem five-fin set, either in FCS or Futures, is going to be a good setup. People are riding this board as a thruster, they're riding it as a quad, they're riding it as a twin plus trailer. There's a lot of different ways that you could set it up based on your preference and the waves that you're surfing.
They're available in two different constructions. The one that I have here is a C4, which is a cork carbon composite construction with a full cork deck, and then painted over. You're seeing through these little windows that the cork is here, but it's actually the entire deck of the board.
This is an EPS epoxy construction, so this is a little bit lighter. It's also stringerless, with the carbon reinforcements on the top and the bottom, so this board actually has a little bit more bend and rebound out of the turns. Lost is also making it in their standard PU poly construction, which does have a stringer, more standard weight, and some nice resin tints as well.
So it's the Lost LayZToy II, available exclusively at REAL. Sizes 5'0" for the groms, which would actually be either an awesome grom board or a really lightweight surfer's board, all the way up to the 7'2", which is just an absolute paddling machine. It'll get you a ton of waves, and that small amount of time that you have to go surf, it's going to convert it into a really good time.
Lost LayZToy II. If you have any questions about this board or you'd like to place an order, you can give us a call at the shop, 252-987-6000, or look us up online, realwatersports.com/surfing. Thanks for tuning in.
