Sneakers or felony shoes?

Adidas sneakers or felony shoes?

I was shocked and amazed when a friend sent me a press release about the new Adidas sneakers getting ready to drop this August.

To me, the sneakers look pretty much like the rest of the Adidas line, but they come with a chain and ankle bracelet on the back of the sneaker.  Only the additional feature is being called “handcuffs” in the tags.

The chain and ankle bracelet (or cuff, as it is called) are an orange color – a slighly different shade of prison garb.

I remember my Dad wanted everyone to be properly dressed in shoes, he used to call sneakers “felony shoes.”  Did Adidas hear him?

http://thegrio.com/2012/06/15/new-adidas-shoes-come-with-shackle/

What do  you think?

Sneakers are important to teenage boys (speaking specfically of the ones I know).  They associate the sneaker with athletic performance and a general “cool factor.”

Sneakers are so cool that when we wrote the kid money book,  Nacho Money, we wove new sneakers (as a reward for good grades) into the story.  The value of good grades was equivalent to a new pair of sneakers to the protagonist, Max.

As a side note, it is especially important to have a sneaker that you can wear all the time, yet keep it in perfect condition without getting even the sole of the sneaker dirty.

Beyond just looking new and cool, there is an entire underground sneaker re-sale kid biz that happens on the Internet when the sneakers are “old.”  Which happens about two weeks after the style drops.  Kinda like the movies ~ if it is not a box office hit, you can get it on DVD shortly after the release date.

Speaking of release date ~ isn’t that when a person gets out of prison?  Which brings me back to the Adidas shackles (as they are being called).

If this was just for the buzz factor, mission accomplished but in the word’s of Mr. C’s Cha-Cha Slide “how low can you go?”

Candi Sparks is the author of children’s books about money “Can I Have Some Money?”.  Educating Children About Money, Max Gets It!,  Nacho Money and other titles.  She is the Brooklyn mother of two and is on Facebook and Twitter (Candi Sparks, author).