Adidas Stream: Heat or Hype: What retro sneakers are overrated or underrated?

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Heat or Hype: What retro sneakers are overrated or underrated?

Wow, Drake. That’s an impressive Jordan retro collection. I haven’t seen one of those since… this morning from one of our followers on the KoF Twitter.

Retros, retros, retros. Somewhere along the way the sneakerhead community (ok, the vocal ones that love to front on social media) abandoned the chase for the latest in design and technology and decided that they were going to plant their flag in the 90s and say “nah, we’re done.”

Many say the tipping point for the retro craze becoming the dominant force came when the Air Jordan 11 “Concord” dropped in late 2011 and we’ve been living a fever dream of buying the same shoes again and again since. That’s not to say the whole retro phenomenon has been a bad thing, however. Thanks to the renewed interest in the most popular kicks from the past, we’ve seen companies dig deep into their archives hoping to find the next big hit, put together new and exciting colorways for old favorites and given us a reason to care about names like Shawn Kemp, Shaquille O’Neal, Grant Hill and Antoine “dammit, stop shooting” Walker again now that they have a second life of relevance.

But let’s also be real, not every retro is created equal. In fact, some of the retros that have dropped this year weren’t even that popular when they first came out. So for this week’s edition of Heat or Hype, here are some of the more notable signature (well, mostly signature) retros to drop this year and we want to know whether you think their popularity is deserved (properly rated), undeserved (overrated) or could use some more love (underrated).