Johnny Barry’s Freaker Sneaks is a company that produces super-small runs of custom sneakers. Its take on the retro Air Jordans IV are especially sleek, including 2017’s extremely limited SNES and NES-themed ones. Now there’s a Game Boy pair, and holy shit do they look hot.
They’re $1,350 a pop though, and like most of Barry’s stuff only 10 pairs will be sold. That’s both good and bad. Bad because neither you nor I will ever get our hands on them. Good because neither you nor I will end up spending $1,350 on them.
The left and right heels have the handheld’s d-pad and two face buttons embedded on them respectively, while the front flaps feature Super Mario Land’s box art and an image from the game as it would have appeared on the Game Boy’s mini green-tinted LCD screen. Did I mention the buttons are press-able? A plastic Game Boy cartridge serves as the hang tag.
The package as a whole works a lot better than all three of the previous Nintendo console versions, mostly because the warm, off-white grey tinged with yellow and green is a lot less oppressive than the darker, cooler greys of the SNES and Super Famicom color schemes. The black in the NES Jordans is just ugly.
The Game Boy variant also has the honor of a shared birthday. Both the Air Jordan IVs and the handheld released in 1989, making them a uniquely perfect pop cultural crossover that’ll you never have.
Via Attract Mode.