Whoa! This is heavy. We might be able to step into Marty McFly’s shoes before 2015.
Update Again: The first auctions – there will be 150 auctioned each day for a total of ten days – is now live with the highest bid currently for a pair of size 8 shoes earning more than $9,000. Thanks, Ranooth.
Update: Nike did in fact reveal the Air Mag tonight, but it’s a lot less cooler than you think. The contoured grey shoe is a replica of the prop used in the movie, complete with light-up Nike branding, but the laces do not power tight, despite an international patent filed in April 2009 for such an innovation. No, Nike said that they will be auctioning off only 1500 of these sneakers on Ebay to benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s work on finding a cure for Parkinson’s Disease. Of course, Fox played the role of Marty McFly in Back to the Future and now suffers from the malady that his Foundation is fighting. Nike will donate $50 million plus all of the proceeds from the auctions – which will actually be doubled from matching donations.
It all sounds like a great cause. But I kind of wish we were living in the future and this was the real deal being sold to real consumers. Oh well, some day I’ll have my Hoverboard.
Source: Nike
Original Post: Many of the fictional gadgets in movies and TV shows have since inspired real products like the cellphone acting like a communicator from Star Trek or a body-controlled interface from Minority Report showing up with Kinect. It’s rare though that a future product lampooned in a movie gets released by the actual company it was meant to skewer – and four years earlier than predicted. Yet that seems to be the case for the Nike Air Mag, which according to reports may be revealed at a special event in Los Angeles tonight.
You might remember the Nike Air Mag from Back to the Future Part II. Marty McFly from 1985 is given a bunch of clothes from 2015 so that he can impersonate his teenaged son. In a trademark bright orange Nike box are light grey high top sneakers that automatically tighten when McFly puts his heel into the shoe. “Power laces! All right!” McFly exclaims.
Original scene from Back to the Future:
Today, a mysterious video popped up on YouTube posted by a user named “DocEmmettBrown88” called McFly’s Closet that raised my eyebrows. The camera slowly dollys through a room full of Nike Air Mags with a theme from Back to the Future playing. Huh, that’s weird, I thought.
But then I saw a post on sneaker enthusiast website NiceKicks.com about a surprise official announcement from Nike occurring tonight. Waiting for reporter Matt Halfhill in his hotel room was a black box containing metal glasses like what “Doc” Brown wore in Back to the Future II and a bunch of throwback candy and Pepsi. On top of the box was an iPod shuffle with Christopher Lloyd saying the following quote, “Welcome to Los Angeles. If my calculations are correct, over the next 24 hours you are about to see some serious shit!”
An invitation to the event reads: “It’s about time! … an unveiling that could change the course of time.”
All signs point to Nike revealing the Air Mag tonight and the weird part is that the shoes are coming almost 4 years early. The future is so bright, I have to wear aluminum shades.
Now, if only Mattel could invent the Hoverboard …
Source: Nicekicks
Thanks for the tip, Frankie the Hack.
Published: Sep 9, 2011 03:41 am