Sneakerheads love Back to the Future. Everyone loves Back to the Future, actually. Who wouldn’t want to meet their parents when they were your age? And who doesn’t want power lacing Air MAGS to ride your real hoverboard?
Campless PSA: That two-wheeled thing you’re scooting around on these days is NOT a hoverboard. A hoverboard . . . wait for it . . . HOVERS! It does NOT have wheels . . . wtf people . . .
So when Nike announced power-lacing MAGs on October 21, but didn’t release them, sneakerheads needed somewhere to channel their hype – and resell dollars. Enter the Nike Bruin McFly – a.k.a. the definition-of-dead-simple sneaker that 1985-Marty wore in the film. And enter ridiculous hype.
The Nike Bruin was announced the same day Tinker sent Michael J. Fox that letter (Oct. 21) and released on October 30. It’s retail price was $110. But before the first pair was on Nike.com, pre-sellers were having a field day, with one pair going for $715. I’m not positive, but I bet you could find the TRUCK that Marty drove in Back to the Future for less than $700 these days. Rumored to be only 500 pairs released – by the end of launch day there were more than 50 Bruins sold on eBay, at an average price of over $400.
But even a 500-pair run of a nostalgic icon couldn’t save the inevitable crash of people paying Yeezy money for the world’s simplest shoe. Within one week of release, resell price was down to $249, a 55% drop from it’s peak at $554. And by the end of the month, it was down to $225, where it’s been ever since.
We think $225 is still too much to pay for the Bruin. It has the BTTF tie-in, for sure, but there are 1285 sneakers on Campless with an average resell price less than $225, not mention basically an infinite number of retail shoes that you could have for half the price.
All that said, if anyone from Nike is reading this and you were considering hooking us up with power-lacing MAGs, please disregard everything we said above. We didn’t mean it.
