Yesterday, we discussed Nike’s awesome Air Mag shoe, which is a recreation of the shoes worn by Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part II. The buzz these shoes received was tremendous. However, the information surrounding them was not. However, thanks to Nike, who released a press release to commemorate the Air Mag’s release, there’s much more information available.
First and foremost, even though Nike has patented a self-lacing system, it will not be available on the current edition of Marty’s shoes. While the shoes are indeed incredible-looking, they aren’t just available in an effort to introduce a new fashion sense. No, the Air Mags are being sold for charitable purposes. As many of you already know, Marty McFly was played by Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and the Air Mag auction is being done to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which was created to help combat the debilitating illness.
From Nike:
1500 pairs of the 2011 NIKE MAG will be auctioned on eBay with all net proceeds going directly to The Michael J. Fox Foundation. Each day for the duration of the ten-day auction, one hundred and fifty pairs of the 2011 NIKE MAG shoes will be made available via eBay’s Fashion Vault. The auction starts September 8, 8:30PM PST, and will end September 18. Thanks to a previous 50 million dollar match given to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, all donations will be matched, effectively doubling the contributions from the auction.
As indicated, the auction started last night at 11:30 PM, eastern standard time, and the reaction to the cause has been almost overwhelming. While most of the bids are hovering at or above the $4000 marker, there’s at least one pair with a current bid of $8,200.
A screenshot of the auction page gives a great idea of what’s going on:
Click for bigger image
As indicated yesterday, Nike took a viral approach to marketing these shoes, and that become even more apparent when they released additional content for the shoe, in the form of video:
And, a word from Michael J. Fox:
While the auction looks to be a success, one has to think that if the power laces were included, the bids on these shoes would be off the charts.