Should Have Waited 7 More Years

June 27, 2008 5:21 AM

Hello, McFly?! Don't you know that the McFly 2015's people have been buzzing about for years seem to finally be arriving in a few weeks? Auto-Lacing? Not quite, but there's flywire! Glowing? Well, no. But you could set your wallet ablaze.
posted by cashman (28 comments total)

Why does McFly need shoes at all, in a world with hoverboards? It's not like he was going to have to walk on water anyway. Hovershoes!
posted by DU at 5:37 AM on June 27, 2008

DU, you bojo; hoverboards don't work on water (unless you got power)!
posted by Servo5678 at 6:04 AM on June 27, 2008

> Imagine a paper-thin shoe, no more than two microns thick, whose only support comes from threads.

My old Chuck Taylors!
posted by ardgedee at 6:11 AM on June 27, 2008 [10 favorites has favorites]

There are two reasons that the shoes in the movie were cool; power laces ("Power laces, all right!") and a light-up Nike logo. These shoes have neither; therefore they are not cool.

At least they're doing the hat properly. Now where's my auto-fit jacket?
posted by designbot at 6:19 AM on June 27, 2008

Yeah why don't we have auto lacing shoes or scratch that shoes that auto tighten to cradlel your feet. It sounds like something very doable. Maybe wearable electronics will get there.
posted by Rubbstone at 6:25 AM on June 27, 2008

The really futuristic thing would be to coat the earth with a soft moss and eliminate germs that cause odor. Then you wouldn't need shoes.
posted by DU at 6:27 AM on June 27, 2008

Nike Blue

Now, do your consumerist part and go buy overpriced shoes!

/Matt...you should get a cut of the profits for an ad like this....
posted by HuronBob at 6:30 AM on June 27, 2008

Holy Crap, I made that comment BEFORE I saw that they were selling for $499!

I'm betting that these were made in some sweatshop at a cost less than $10... With all the pressing needs in this world, how can anyone justify spending that kind of money on a pair of frigging sneakers....
posted by HuronBob at 6:34 AM on June 27, 2008

No light-up logo? No auto-laces? Those $500 shoes don't even look like the ones in Back to the Future II.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 6:42 AM on June 27, 2008

The really futuristic thing would be to coat the earth with a soft moss and eliminate germs that cause odor. Then you wouldn't need shoes.

You've got your causality backwards. If we didn't wear shoes we wouldn't need to worry about germs that cause (foot) odor.
posted by CaseyB at 7:56 AM on June 27, 2008

Yeah! Shoe germs would be a thing of the past!

In the future, barefoot peoples only have to worry about things like broken glass! Which will still be around in 2015 cuz people will still insist on throwing their trash just anywhere they happen to be, which will be where you haven't been yet but where you WILL be in your futuristic bare feet! You have to think about these things fourth dimensionally! Yes, I have to use this many exclamation points!
posted by ZachsMind at 8:08 AM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Identical In
Every Way
posted by dgaicun at 8:22 AM on June 27, 2008

Forget Back to the Future, I want gear from Idocracy!!!!!!!
posted by illuminatus at 8:46 AM on June 27, 2008

They're also selling exact prop replicas of:

• Darth Vader's boots
• The fabled Team Zissou Adidas
• Forrest Gump's running shoes
• Tom Hank's shoe from The Man with One Red Shoe (limit 1 per customer)
• Neo's boots from The Matrix

posted by designbot at 8:47 AM on June 27, 2008

YOU'RE FIRED
YOU'RE FIRED
YOU'RE FIRED
YOU'RE FIRED
YOU'RE FIRED
YOU'RE FIRED
YOU'RE FIRED
posted by Smart Dalek at 8:52 AM on June 27, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If I'm going to spend that much on shoes from the future I'm getting a pair of Reebok Bug Stompers.

And if I have trouble with the neighborhood bully we'll pull back and nuke him from orbit. Only way to be sure.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 8:59 AM on June 27, 2008

Pepsi Shoe?
posted by mikoroshi at 9:32 AM on June 27, 2008

No, Dalek, you're fired!!!
posted by pyrex at 9:47 AM on June 27, 2008

It would be easy enough to make that Nike logo glow too. They could use some EL Tape and a small battery in the sole. Hell, if I wore shoes like this I'd consider doing an after-market mod just out of principle.
posted by quin at 10:18 AM on June 27, 2008

So does anyone know when these are coming out? I know the Hyperdunks are coming out in multiple colorways on 7/26... Any idea if the grey/teal is coming out same day?
posted by subaruwrx at 12:04 PM on June 27, 2008

First, a post taking Max Headroom's name in vain, and now a pair off rip-off shoes that dont. look. anything. like. the. originals.

What's next, some sort of duck hunt ripoff??
posted by ericbop at 12:36 PM on June 27, 2008

(obligatory disclaimer: I actually do happen to work for Nike.)

Jeezus, people... this is clearly not even intended to be an attempt to make the actual McFly shoe. Not even close. This is an already-existing shoe. If this actually releases, it's just the creation of an additional colorway in an homage to a (sneakerhead) cultural icon.

I'm NOT saying I have any knowledge of an effort to do it, but if Nike ever did decide to try and recreate the (fictional) McFlys, I would expect that it would be as faithful as possible to the (fictional) original. The silhouette should be easy enough to replicate; light-up logos are doable; auto-lacing system... okay, that'd be a challenge.

And HuronBob, sorry, but I call bullshit about your "made in sweatshops for less than $10" claim. And your outrage that Nike's charging $499 for them. Untrue... the retail price on the Hyperdunk is $110, and the inflated $499 on that (unrelated) page is someone else's huge, unethical markup based on their own speculation and money-grubbing.

I've already weighed in on "sweatshop" claims here. And as far as how much things cost, here's the rule of thumb: Nike's wholesale price is generally about half of the retail price. And Nike's cost is approximately half of that. So, in this case, the real numbers are going to be more along the lines of:
- $27.50 cost to Nike (materials, development costs, labor, overhead, etc.)
- $55 what Nike then charges retailer (e.g. Foot Locker)
- $110 what retailer then charges consumer

If you want to feel outraged about that, be my guest. At least base it on facts, instead of your own Dickensian fantasies.
posted by rodeoclown at 3:47 PM on June 27, 2008

C'mon you guys. Nike needs our help!
posted by tkchrist at 4:06 PM on June 27, 2008

C'mon you guys. Nike needs our help!

tkchrist, I don't follow your witty rejoinder. No one's asking for your help. I didn't start this thread and I don't know the person who did. This whole McFly thing is a genuine cultural meme, not created by Nike, as evidenced by (among others) this article from over two years ago--some other guy also had an online petition for Nike to make the McFlys, with (he claimed) 17,000 signatures from 50 countries. Even I hadn't heard of this latest petition site. Don't call "Pepsi Blue" on this.

Maybe you aren't familiar with the number and intensity of "sneakerheads" out there that are fanatical about collecting the latest, rarest or vintage kicks. Maybe you don't care. Maybe you think they're out of their minds. Sometimes even I do. You may disagree, but I don't think this is any less worthy of an FPP than most other stuff shared here.

Regarding my defense of big, evil, corporate Nike: I'm not a marketing shill. I get pissed when people make up stuff about how Nike makes its shoes, because that's what I do: I work with both the USA teams (design, marketing, etc.) and the Asia teams (commercialization and manufacturing) to actually figure out how to make new shoes and get them into production. I actually spend time in the factories, the people "over there" making shoes are my teammates and friends, and so I do take it very personally when someone insinuates that they're abused, churning out shoes that cost pennies to make while we count our money and polish our monocles.

A couple of years ago, one of my Asian coworkers was visiting from Thailand and we went out for dinner. She's tiny (maybe five feet tall) and has a voice barely above a whisper. Someone else at our restaurant overheard that she made shoes for Nike in Asia and asked her something to the effect of, "Hey, aren't you, like, really exploited?" Wow, did she ever rip that guy a new one.
posted by rodeoclown at 6:46 PM on June 27, 2008

The Question Song! He's nice!
posted by bertrandom at 9:02 PM on June 27, 2008

I'm not a marketing shill.

Not trying to be a dick here, but you sort of sound like one.

I'm neither defending Nike nor the people in this thread who are making sweatshop comments (nor even poor tkchrist, whose comment was pretty innocent). I don't know too much about the truth behind the Nike sweatshop situation/rumor/news item, but you really can't get pissed at people for mentioning it -- it's not like there haven't been plenty of stories in the news about it in the past. And it's not as though there aren't scads of information you can find just by Googling "Nike sweatshops."

Like, are these guys just making stuff up out of whole cloth? How about these guys? Or these guys? What about these guys? 'Cause all those are just on the first page of results.

What's more, in the thread you link to, another user highlights Nike's own in-house reports to indicate that working conditions in its factories still are not up to standards. If that's the case, then I'm glad it's still a talking point.

As I said, I'm not trying to be argumentative; you certainly have more knowledge about the inner workings of Nike than I do. But you sound really defensive, and you sort of jumped down tk's throat for making a relatively innocuous comment about a trend you yourself admitted to finding silly sometimes.

I dunno -- like I said, you know more than I do, and I'm glad for your perspective. But you sound a little more pissed off than you need to be.
posted by hifiparasol at 9:26 PM on June 27, 2008

Not trying to be a dick here, but you sort of sound like one.

Fair enough, and point taken. I recognize that it's difficult/impossible, in the near-anonymity of the internet, to tell the difference between a shill and someone earnestly defending their job/company. All I can say is that in my case it's the latter, which of course you're free to doubt.

Not to prolong the argument, but in the four links you provided, I really didn't notice any content that was newer than eight years ago. There's been a tremendous amount of change since then, but I'd still agree that "working conditions in its factories still are not up to standards." As far as Nike's CR reports, I'll provide the link myself here.

Maybe I am being overly defensive, but at least to me, hearing tired old sweatshop claims pisses me off in much the same visceral way as the "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who won't sing the national anthem" stuff that I fully expect to hear when I visit my arch-conservative uber-Mormon in-laws next month... they hear it repeated enough that it becomes truth to them. To be fair, the Nike stuff may be based on untruths, partial truths or former truths, but in my insider experience (closing in on ten years now) it's nothing like that now, if it ever was.

Sorry to whine/shill and run, but we're heading out on a family vacation in the morning and I will be internet-free for the next week. If there's anything still pending then, I'd be happy to respond, if the thread's not cold and dead.
posted by rodeoclown at 11:49 PM on June 27, 2008

Yahoo picks up the story - Nike commissioned this guy (loads of pics at the link of the shoes and the events) to drive Kobe to an event in CA to launch the shoes...but only $350 pairs of the McFlys were made. Wired has a report too, about how disappointing the event was.

Various pairs of the hyperdunks are currently going on ebay for $800-$1500.
posted by cashman at 8:15 AM on July 10, 2008