Kien Lieu #7.

With ASICS recently launching a skateboard footwear line, I thought I'd look at a slice of Puma's effort from the 1990s. Even with how popular their shoes were for skateboarders in the low 1990s, the official skate program never really connected. The ads didn't have the best design so that probably didn't help the cause any. The shoes looked very much like the 1990s, by being well padded cupsoles.

We often make a simplified generalization that all a company has to do is make basic skate versions of a couple of their iconic shoes and it will work out fine, but it never does. Maybe that's a harder task than it sounds. I also imagine there are too many cooks in the kitchen at the large shoe companies so the undertakings are doomed from the get-go.

I watched some of the X-Games this weekend and it was fine.

The photo is by Ed Dominick.

Slap - February 1996 Volume 5 Number 2