You know me, I very rarely, if ever pay full retail for anything, but these ones I really wanted. As for the old synthetic, yes I agree it was very playable and soft, but after time it peels off very badly, that was the only reason I didn't like that material back then. The new synthetic is not good too, too stiff like you said, I would have loved for them to put some genuine leather on it, Reebok are so strange and unexplained to me, take for example the Kamikaze ll retros, 40 different colorways and only 2 or 3 out of them are done with good quality materials, that last one black and grey pair I bought, the leather on the toe box is so good, its 90's good, same goes for the pink bk awareness pair and we have so many other done in that new plastic stuff...nothing we can do.
Aside from this, I really hope the rest of it will be on point, real Graphlite, good soft polylite midsole and thick padding, if that is present, I will be happy.