The Glove Thread / Zoom Flight 98

dankenstien88 said:
The lack of a liner, suede rand and white/black 3 piece outsole/toecap are major deviations from the shoes original design.

You can cal it nitpicking or hating or whatever you want to justify your purchase, but it doesn't change the fact these look like trash compared to the originals. Im gonna stay pointing it out because this was my favorite colorway, these retros are a disgrace to the original design and look damn near like some fakes.
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For someone that never own or maybe never held the OG's, I'm sure the product being new to them is perfectly acceptable. Some will take it as a slap in the face and will not accept an inferior retro. I've taken the approach of these being a retro of GP's on court version and unless I can find a pair of those, this as as close as I'm going to get and that is my justification for buying them when I do. But there is no way you can say one is nitpicking over the obvious (and numerous) differences from the og to the retro.
 
I am an 80's baby with a passion for 90's sneakers and culture. British knights, LA gear, Ewing, spalding olajuwons, Air Raids, Converse run N slams and Aero Jams to name a few are what I proudly posses. I copped every pair of classic sneakers from the Era of whend my sneaker passion started. The gloves are part of that. I didn't go pick mine up and started looking for what not to like about it. I buy sneakers that mean something to me, It's not like I'm buying a car, or a house, I'm buying art that goes on my feet... this is not an everyday sneaker, neither is any Jordan or the other 90% of expensive sneakers, Only airmaxes and Reebok classics to name a few are everyday sneakers. With that said, I love the opportunity I have to rock sneakers from my younger era and I love this shoe.
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Even tho the liner is disappointing on the white pair, there is no getting past that they are clean :smokin and I actually prefer the black leather over suede too so it doesn't bother me that much and the same goes for the liner
 
leongunera said:
I am an 80's baby with a passion for 90's sneakers and culture. British knights, LA gear, Ewing, spalding olajuwons, Air Raids, Converse run N slams and Aero Jams to name a few are what I proudly posses. I copped every pair of classic sneakers from the Era of whend my sneaker passion started. The gloves are part of that. I didn't go pick mine up and started looking for what not to like about it. I buy sneakers that mean something to me, It's not like I'm buying a car, or a house, I'm buying art that goes on my feet... this is not an everyday sneaker, neither is any Jordan or the other 90% of expensive sneakers, Only airmaxes and Reebok classics to name a few are everyday sneakers. With that said, I love the opportunity I have to rock sneakers from my younger era and I love this shoe.
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I respect your passion and I also view these as art therefor I think that a deviation from the artists original design is a slap in the face to both the designer and the consumer. The white toecap bothers me so much, it immediately throws off the whole design of the shoe. The toe rand is visually supposed to blend into the mid-sole which blends into the sole. Its like releasing the white/black/taxi Jordan XIIs with a white sole... it compromises the original fluidity of the design.

The lack of a liner exposing the raw material underneath makes the shoes look cheap and absolutely terrible with the cover rolled down. The flip flopped velcro/tongue swooshes, white laces and lighter green are trivial things that I could let pass; but the other changes like a plastic midfoot shank instead of carbon fiber, synthetic rand instead of suede, lack of transparent green inlays in the outsole and that awful exposed "rat skin" synthetic upper are nothing more than blatant cost cutting measures.

The reason these dont have a black toecap isn't because GP wore them like that (his actually had forest green accents in place of neon green) its because it would require a 3 step molding process. The original process required molding a black cap into a slotted white outsole then laying it ontop and fusing it with the transparent inlay. These retros appear to be a much cheaper 2 step process where a solid piece pre-formed out-sole is molded directly with an accent color eliminating any possibility for transparent accents. It looks like all future gloves will be molded this way making for some very awkward looking color placement (ie no black rand on the Miamis)

They may not realize it but subliminally one of the reasons the white/black/red OGs and OSUs are looking so good to most people compared to the rest of the retros is because the single piece outsole/toecap is incorporated cleanly into the design and flows well with the toerand and contrasts the rest of the shoe highlighting its intended design. The inside view of the white/blacks looks off to me because its not just the toecap that should be black its supposed to be the entire medial portion of the sole visable on the foot. These shoes were originally designed with a similar "ying-yang" layout very reminiscent of the AJ XIIs, but changing toecap/outsole distorts their whole appearance.


Im not trying to be a hater or searching for these things I dislike, but these differences stick out to me like a sore thumb. The white/black/green colorway was always my favorite and seeing them release in such poor form is extremely disappointing.
 
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I'm with dankenstien88  on the whites. What Nike did to them is an affront. Unfortunately, the only other option to get them is to check ebay constantly in the hopes that my size comes up in an OG, which is both time consuming and expensive so I'll probably purchase one or two pairs of the whites. I know this makes me a mug but I only I had the blacks back in 98.
 
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