Marvel and L.A Gear teamed up to release a line of character themed athletic shoes. Oddly, they seem to have been released without much fanfare. In fact, I had never heard of them until I stumbled upon them one day on hottopic.com. I had been searching for Spider-Man items on their site when they popped up. From what I've been able to track down, they've made shoes based on Spider-Man, Captain America, Deadpool, Iron Man, The Punisher, and Black Panther. So far I've purchased the Spider-Man and Punisher shoes with an eye towards the Black Panther pair.
I haven't seen or even thought about L.A. Gear in over twenty years. The shoes were popular in the 80's/early 90's. The brand seemed to have disappeared along with other once popular brands like K-Swiss and British Knights (raise your hand if you remember those!). L.A. Gear was so big that at one point they made Michael Jackson branded shoes.
The Spider-Man version comes in a lightweight low top. The shoes are blue, red and black and feature both a Marvel and spider logo on the tongue. The insoles are made of memory foam and feature a picture of Spidey. They seem to be a pretty well made pair of shoes. I'm not the biggest fan of the look of the shoe, but I'm a huge Spidey fan so I picked them up because Spider-Man.
The Punisher shoes come in a black and grey high top. Again, the insoles are made of memory foam. Like the Spidey shoes, the tongue features Punisher's skull logo. The logo is also featured on the bottom of the shoe and on a tag with the Marvel logo on the side. They aren't as light as the Spidey ones, obviously, but they're a solid pair of shoes. These ones look much better than the Spidey pair. It would have been nice had they been more lightweight, but overall, they're a pretty killer shoe.
