Today, we are taking a detailed look at these bad boys right here: the Replica Air Jordan 4 in a brand new craft release. Believe it or not, I think those Navy fives—I’m wondering if they just forgot to put the craft label on them, ’cause like I was looking at these and I was like, “This is just like the craft fours,” and I didn’t see the craft name anywhere online, and I looked at the box and it says craft. So I was like, “Okay, so it is a craft release.” So again, I think, not confirmed or anything, just my speculation, but I think that they just forgot to label those as a craft. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Air Jordan 4 Box: A Cool Addition
Anyways, this is the olive colorway of the Air Jordan 4 craft. This box is gorgeous. I know you don’t wear the box, I get it, but look at it, man, it’s cool, and it comes with the shoes for 210 bucks, which is what these retail for. Like, jeez, give me a cool box. It’s not like action figures when, like, you get an action figure and you’re like, “Wow, the box is cool,” and then you rip it all open and you throw it away, maybe you cut out the collector card in the back, who knows, but with shoe boxes, most people keep those. So if it’s fancy, why complain?
Reps Shoe Design and Materials
Now, as far as the Reps Shoe is concerned, I really need to know your thoughts ’cause this is your color. I do like the color. Do you like the Rep Shoe? I mean, I know you’re not a big “hurt my pinky toes,” okay, well, there you go. But you think that they’re nice-looking, wait, I also do not like the back tab, I think it is plastic. I’ll get to that soon. Okay, this is the one thing where I was like, really, like, you all were close to making it almost perfect, well, especially since they have that rubber version that they use, like, it’s not going to curl like the leather kind, so let’s just go ahead and get right into it.
Detailed Examination: From Top to Bottom
Okay, so normally we start with the traction, the cushion, and we work our way up. We’re going to start from the top down this time, and not just the top, but those little intricate details and stuff like that. First off, the back tab and the lace crowns on sneakers, they call them floating ice days, kind of interesting. I’ve always thought that they were like the net of the basketball hoop, you know what I mean? So yeah, the one thing that I think is really cool is, way back in the day, 1999 to be exact, they came out with two retro plus colorways. One of them was the Columbia Blues, the other one was the black Oreos, both of which have been re-released at least once. I believe that those two were the first two models to be part of the whole remastered line, which was not quite remastered. These are a little bit closer to a full remastered feel, like closer to the original from ’89, overall shape, and all that kind of stuff. But one of the coolest things that those two models did is that they replaced the lockdown wings right here that are typically TPU or plastic, and they replaced them with leather, a more elegant or updated or upgraded, however, you want to call it, feel. With that, they also did that to the back tab.
Material Quality: Leather, Suede, and Nubuck
Now, with these guys right here, they did do that, like they used that cracked leather. I’m not a big fan of the cracked leather normally, it’s not a big deal in my opinion, at least on these guys right here, ’cause it’s so small, like the amount of it used is so subtle. It also kind of works for something like this, something where some people don’t actually use these like they let them flap a little bit. I’m one of those people, and the cracked leather would make sense, it kind of like gives it that worn vibe, you know what I mean? So what they didn’t do though, is this back tab, which is clear plastic. It matches the little floating lace ice days or whatever they want to call them, which I think is a cool tie-in. However, usually when we get these leather lockdown wings, we also get a leather back tab, which is way more comfortable than this thing. The only thing that’s as comfortable, if not more, is the SB back tab, the Jordan 4 SBS, which was a very soft rubbery rubber instead of an Achilles slicing and dicing back heel tab. So that’s the only thing that I wish that they would have done, is just kind of like kept it consistent, which would have been like to use the leather, the cracked leather on this. They still use the plastic Jump man, you know, like there’s a cutout and everything, they just kind of put it on there.
I think that it looks really cool, I love the leather tabs, so that’s the only complaint that I have with these. The only other one that I can maybe like is that there’s no denting, doesn’t look too bad. I don’t love this, but it doesn’t look awful or anything, it looks like a winterized version, so with that, we’re going to go back to the bottom real quick. I just love it, it’s so simple, and it’s so clean. The first time herringbone was used on an Air Jordan 4 flagship signature, right here, Air Jordan 4, 1989. Moving on up, we’ve got a polyurethane midsole, and yes, it feels like a brick. Inside that polyurethane midsole, we have an encapsulated forefoot Air-Sole unit, and in the back, you can see the window to the soul, which somebody stole from me. And then the insole is of the Dream Cell variety. Now, the upper is where these things shine. I think that they just look fantastic, the color is cool, I like it. Yes, it’s kind of like a—If you want to use this term—I don’t like this term whatsoever, but some people like to use “poor man’s” whatever. I think that that’s degrading to poor people. I used to be one of them, and we work hard man, so you shouldn’t be on us. But this could be considered a poor man’s version of The Undefeated fours. I don’t care, you know what I mean? I just think that it’s a nice use of color and it looks really good. I prefer that they don’t use the orange and stuff like that that was on the original Undefeated fours because I’m not a big fan of that. Now, as far as the materials are concerned, we have a mixture between suede and nubuck. The nubuck you can see because it’s kind of that deep rich green, and it’s the main kind of like panel. Everything else though is that suede, and it just looks great. You can tell that it’s suede because it’s very hairy, it’s not super hairy, but it’s hairy enough, and yeah, I just really like the way that it came out. The tongue looks dope, again the only thing that I would change is putting the netting back on there, I think that it would look really clean like that. But outside of all of that, I think that this is a great release as far as quality is concerned and all of that kind of stuff. I love the shape, there’s a few things on here that I’m not a huge fan of, which would be that weird patch at the ankle and that weird little split at the toe, those are easily looked past though because the Reps Shoe is so pretty like this just looks like a clean fall sneaker, it’s just done up Jordan 4 brand. Now, as far as sizing is concerned, they do fit true to size. Whatever you typically wear with your Air Jordan, that’s what I would recommend. However, if you’re a wide-footer, just be careful because they are pinky-toe killers. Most wide-footers either go up half a size or they skip them altogether. If you’re in the Sacramento area, make sure that you check out Retsneakers.com, their new shop is gorgeous Jordanreps.site, they’ve got all kinds of cool products there, and they just relaunched their website too. So check the link down below in the description box, it’ll head you over to Retsneakers.com where you can see what they have available. With all that being said, thank you guys so much for watching, thank you so much for hanging out with us, we really appreciate you guys. Let us know what you think about these down below in the comments section, do you think that they are perfect as is or do you wish that they used that cracked leather on the back tab too? I think that that really would have just set things off right, talk about feeling premium if you had leather, nubuck, and suede, my goodness, it would have been awesome. But again, thank you so much for being here, we really appreciate y’all, we will catch y’all on the next one. So until then, have a good one. Is it wrong that I just want the box? It’s a really cool box, they should have done some apparel with it, you know what I meant to say that in the New Balance article, that not only are their Rep shoes bitching but their apparel that matches it is so fire, it costs as much as the Reps shoes and I can’t spend $125 on Shoes but it was so nice looking, that’s what I see here, I’m just like what happened to the old like LS releases, you know what I mean? Where like there was the lifestyle shoe and then it came with all this cool apparel that matched with it just like it used to back in the ’80s and early ’90s and yeah, they’re just missing out it’s all over at Reps Shoe Palace, I promise you, I don’t know if that’s the thing anymore, they used to force Shoe Palace to buy their apparel to carry their Footwear, I think they still do ’cause they have all that really awesome stuff right now.