John Bell, who designed the hoverboard you’ve dreamt of cruising on ever since Marty McFly took it for a ride in 1989’s “Back To The Future II,” reminisced with HuffPost Live on Friday about how the iconic board came to be.

“The early designs had a lot more character, a lot more pieces and mechanics added to them,” Bell told host Nancy Redd. He explained that the film crew was hoping the hoverboard — originally conceived as an “air skate” — would be the size of a snowboard, but it ended up looking like a skateboard without wheels.

“We had ideas for different engine pieces and different bound objects that riders could customize,” Bell said. “The same way that [skateboarders] customize with stickers, they would customize with physical pieces that maybe they could have made or found and put onto their hoverboard.”

The end result remains a memorable staple of futuristic design, and Bell told HuffPost Live he’s “shocked” it’s still being talked about 30 years later.

Watch Bell look back on designing the hoverboard in the video above, and click here for the full HuffPost Live conversation about real-life hoverboard technology.

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