KeepinEmFresh -
The foam is cheap and soft now and the color is dull. I'm sure it's easier to fool people that didn't have the originals, but starting probably with the Flightposite retros, it started to get hard to ignore. I know a lot of people slept on the foams back in the day, so maybe the changes to the look and feel of the foam itself isn't as noticeable. I certainly know where I grew up I was the only person camped out on release day for the foam one in '97, the foam max in '98, the flightposite in '99 etc etc etc. So it's not like these were super popular sneakers with the general public.
PurpleHazen -
Well, I've made my living as a pro wrestling villian for the last 12 years, so I'm certainly accustomed to being disliked.
Maserati Har -
More and more people are starting to express their discontent and I hope it's a trend that will continue to gain steam. I eventually reached a point where rather than continue to be disappoined by lack of authenticity with retros, I accepted that they've really become nothing more than official fakes and chose to spend my money elsewhere. Because voting with your wallet is the only thing that works in this world if you want to change things. You're wasting your time casting your ballot on election day. If you want to shake things up, you have to realize your spending habits determine the way the world works.
Sloane Ketterin -
I agree that taking an old idea and putting a slight spin on it is not innovation. It's cheaper for Nike to recycle the past and if we as a culture accept it and embrace it they have no reason to change their ways. If you enjoy your retros, you should continue to buy them, but the question I pose to everyone is, what are we celebrating? What made these sneakers great to begin with? And are those elements being lost by nostalgia becoming almost the sole focus?
Mayhemgatz -
I certainly underatand the emotional connection to the past and the feeling of rocking a shoe you had back in the day or didn't have the chance to own. There is a saying that you can't go home again. Maybe as a culture it's time for a shift. Maybe it's time for those who complain about the inaccuracy of recent retros to say you know what, the originals had their time and place, but if all Nike has to offer is poor replicas, they're not going to get our money anymore.
Capfive -
Nike Basketball has made some great strides the last few years. The shoes you listed in your post, guess what, those are the shoes that fill my closet presently.
I understand that retros are catered toward style and not performance, but I have to be honest, the first time I saw a retro without the carbon fiber plate the original had, I was so intellectually insulted that it become very difficult to take retros seriously after that.
Everyone -
The foamposite was a great shoe. So were most of the shoes in the foamposite line through the years. The cushioning on the skyposite was a joke and the posite line is dead once again. But would Nike have been so lazy with the current model if the public was more demanding of quality and not content to be spoonfed cheap imitations of the foamposite model from 13 years ago?
Retro, retro +, fusion, hybrid, etc etc eventually you get to a point where you start to wonder:
Even if you started with the Mona Lisa, if you continue to make a copy of a copy long enough before you know it you no longer have a great work of art . . . instead you have utter garbage.
