Yeah, I don't think the position that "dunks lost their wow factor" is a crazy one - though I wouldn't phrase it that way.
Nike has a problem with moderation. They can't resist beating any given craze into the ground. That said, they do that, squeeze blood out of that stone, then move on to something else. After a while, they're able to come back to that well again and start the cycle over. People are always getting in and out of the hobby, and the classics pretty reliably can restart the hype machine for any number of shoes if there's been a long enough lull since the last go around.
We'll never recapture the essence of the earlier days of SB Dunks, probably never reach the levels of design consistently, and almost certainly not get back to the quality of those shoes. That's a given, you can only have one first, and one childhood, and whatever happened then will always be the best - even if it actually wasn't, your own nostalgia will compel you to think it was.
So, I judge Nike SB, and particularly SB Dunks against the other branches/models of the company that held/hold similar prestige, and not exclusively against their own past. I like a far greater amount of their new CWs than new make-ups of Jordan retros. The AF1 and AM95 are basically un-purchase-able to me because of shape and materials. The had a decent run of pretty good Foamposite releases going for a while a few years ago, but that's jumped the shark. Air Max isn't dazzling me. And, general Nike Retro has been inconsistent at best. So, comparatively, SB is among one of the better divisions in terms of product and price point almost by default. The new Bron, Kove, and KD sigs are okay, depending on how I'm feeling the design for that year, simply on the basis that their quality isn't toal basura.
