Puma x Pokémon
Anytime a sneaker company announces a video game collaboration, I steel myself in preparation for what is almost always the most Zumies-ass pair of kicks possible. Whether it’s agaggle of characters or logos printed together in an almost illegible pattern and slapped on a shoe, or a shoe bearing an amalgamation of colors that should only belong in game form, gaming sneakers are almost uniformly hideous.
These Puma x Pokémon kicks, however, are not. They pull off what every gaming-adjacent piece of clothing should pull off: they emulate rather than recreate. Sure, there’s a Pikachu dangling off of these sneakers (which I would 100% take off), but without that dangling dude you wouldn’t know that these were Pokémon shoes—you’d just appreciate the mustard, canary, and butter yellow colorway and the lightning pattern on the Puma swoosh.
