First off, two of the three designs I’m going to show you involve Nike Flywire technology. Since all I knew about it was that it was used in the Hyperdunk (but now seems like we’ll start seeing it crop up a lot more), I figured it was time to get edumacated. So here you go:

Flywire “entails the use of high-tensile Vectran threads (stronger than Kevlar) which cut down on weight of the product yet adds stability” (Cool Hunting). Hm. That doesn’t seem so difficult to understand. The term “flywire” is cool too; it’s no “monkey paw” (which is the second greatest Nike technology name ever, just behind the oft-forgotten “mountain goat hoof“), but it gets the point across.

But enough of that technology jibber-jabber…on to the pictures.

The shoe below is the ’09 Air Max, utilizing the aforementioned flywire technology. Combine that with what appears to be a one piece Air Max 360 air cushion and you have some “shoe of the future” type shit. I bet these are as comfortable on your feet as Katie Holmes in her plush Scientology kennel.

Blue colorway…kinda boring.

Grey/black/red colorway…a little more excitement, but still lacking.

Yowza! Bright green and silver…that there’s the sardine’s whiskers. Lay the type, spread the ink, press to paper, run that shit!

These are called the “Hypermax”. Obvious cues from the Hyperdunk, plus Air Max. (The days of shoes being called things like “Air Revaderchi” or “Zoom Zvezdochka” are obviously long behind us.) Anywho, I like these quite a bit. If I still played basketball with any kind of regularity, I bet these things would work wonders. They look kind of like a Ken Griffey, Jr. signature basketball shoe, if that’s possible.

Last up are the Zoom FP (which stands for “Fun Police”). For those of you too young to remember, the “Fun Police” were a group of NBA players that starred in a Nike ad campaign in the late 90s, with the central theme that the players were making sure people were having fun when they played basketball. There were some awesome commercials centered around the Fun Police, so it’s a shame I could only find this one. And it doesn’t have sound. Hey, I’m the only one who posts here…what do you expect? Oh really? WELL YOU’RE NOT PERFECT EITHER.

Anyway, here’s what the Zoom FP looks like. An amalgam of the the Zoom Flight V (J. Kidd), the Air Garnett III (KG), and the Zoom Flight T Bug ( Tim Hardaway). The black ones look a bit too much like the Air Garnett IIIs for me, but the white ones have morphed into something completely new and awesome. Say what you want about the mass recycling of designs Nike has been doing lately, but I think these turned out well.