Hot New Shoe Trend Hitting The Market: $350 Astro Boy Boots

If you've got $350 to spare and are a fan of Astro Boy (the first popular animated Japanese TV series that embodied the aesthetic later known as anime), Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF has got the boots for you. 

These boots are doing numbies across social media with commenters referencing Sonic, Megaman, Astro Boy, Mickey Mouse clubhouse, Ronald McDonald 7s, Pac Man 3s, etc. etc. There was also a large contingent in the "Ugh, these are the WORST. This is the end of society as we know it," camp. 

My cynical inclination is to hate them, too, but I gotta say I LOVE 'em. MSCHF nailed the execution of a cartoon boot - they're just fun and pleasing to look at - and though I'm nowhere near hot enough to leave the house in them without getting roasted, I'd still like to take em for a spin around my apartment and do a little photoshoot for Instagram likes. 

Via Jake Silbert of High Snobiety:

Not that they aren't cool, of course (they're ridiculously cool), but these boots are so visually arresting that even non-sneakerheads are paying attention. Talk about crossover success: maybe we'll see regular folks walking around in these giant, amorphic stompers.

I'd like to think he's right that though they seem like a joke, we might actually start seeing them on the streets. Back in the Dino Stompers Era I thought it would only be fashion bloggers wearing the thick soled monstrosities, but I started seeing them everywhere including here at the office, all over the city, and even on some of my fellow boring/vanilla style friends. Even still you can't walk down the street in NYC without catching a few pairs. 

Big Red Boots are up next (fingers crossed). It'd really brighten up the dreary sidewalks of February/March on the East Coast to have these suckers clomping around next to my 4 year old pair of gray New Balances.