Back to the Future II shoe Nike Mag becomes reality - Limited edition of 1500 goes on sale tonight (September 8th at 8:30 p.m. PT) through Ebay auction.
Update: First pair of Nike Mag went under the hammer for $37,500!
Great Scott!
(By the way; If you failed to win a bid for the Back To The Future II shoes, the cap is still available)
The sneaker maker said in Thursday that it has created a limited-edition shoe based on a glowing pair that appeared in the 1989 movie "Back to the Future II."
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| Nike Mag release September 8th 2011 |
The 2011 Nike Mag is designed to be an identical to the fictional shoe, including a glowing Nike name on the strap.
The high top shoe features glowing LED lights and an electroluminescent Nike logo. Power laces, a prominent feature of the shoe in the film, are not present.
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| Nike Mag design |
Nike announced on September 8th, 2011 that it would be releasing 1500 pairs of the shoe for auction on eBay. All proceeds from the sales will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's disease researce.
Fox famously played Marty McFly in the "Back to the Future" time-travel trilogy, where he wore the shoes during a visit to the year 2015.
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| Back to the Future II sneakers from Nike |
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| NIKE MAG released |
"It hasn't gone unnoted by us that there is something special about that shoe and, of course, the movie," said famed Nike shoe designer Tinker Hatfield, who helped design the original shoe and worked on the latest version.
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| Tinker Hatfield: "It's about time." |
Nike's collector sneaker has been long awaited by shoe collectors and movie fans, who have been urging the company to make them ever since the movie was released. There were roughly eight or ten pairs used in the movie, some of which are in Nike's possession and a few that collectors somehow got their hands on.
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| Back to the Future II kicks "Nike Mag" |
Owning them, or even seeing a pair of them, has become a singular pursuit for some fans. There was even an online campaign a few years ago called "McFly 2015, Make it Happen" that gathered thousands of signatures to convince Nike to bring the McFly shoe back.
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| Michael J. Fox putting on Nike Mag sneakers in Back to the Future II |
"This is the biggest thing that has happened to sneakers since Michael Jordan, hands down," said Matt Halfhill, an avid shoe collector who runs the website nicekicks.com and flew from Austin, Texas, to Los Angeles for the unveiling of the shoe on Thursday hours after Nike contacted him. "Other than the birth of one of my children, I wouldn't have missed this for anything."
Nike Inc., based in Beaverton, Ore., decided more than four years ago to create the shoe, but was unsure when a pair would be ready. Unlike the shoes in the movie, the real-life versions had to be designed for day-to-day use. For instance, the design used in the movie required Fox to wear a battery pack with wires running down his pants to light the shoe, which was the best technology available at the time.
Hatfield said the Nike Mag has been difficult to develop and the electrical systems, which illuminate the shoe for up to five hours, have been one of the most challenging things the company has ever done in footwear. But the timing seemed perfect to bring the shoe back to support a bigger idea.
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| Great Scott!!! |
That Nike is releasing the shoe in 2011 enables it to take advantage of a matching grant for the foundation. Google founder Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki have offered to match all donations to the Michael J. Fox Foundation up to $50 million through the end of 2012.
"The project is exciting to me because it brings together three very passionate audiences: the Parkinson's community, sneakerheads and `Back to the Future' fans," Fox said in a statement. "With their support we can accelerate our objective of finding a cure for Parkinson's."
The auction begins Tonight and will end Sept. 18.
Good luck!
The question now is: When is Nike releasing the Hoverboard from Back to the Future II?
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| Back to the Future II shoe Nike Mag on Hoverboard |
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| Michael J. Fox on Letterman |
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| Nike Air Mag - United States of America Patent Office Paper |
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| Nike Mag launch |
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| Nike Mag on DeLorean from Back To The Future II |
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| Nike Mag storage |
