While actually shipping July 15th, the Marty MacFly 2015 Hat Replica is available for pre-order today for the low, low price of $US25. But not only does the hat’s rainbow styling give you a taste of fashion to come, its one-size-fits-all design is outfitted with Velcro—the space-age fastening technology that’s normally so rare and expensive that only Payless shoe stores can afford to fly in available stock from Jupiter.

Living in the future is the best, isn’t it? [Amazon via ChipChick]

The box itself has 2015 on its side, and the slide out inner chamber is patterned like Marty’s hoverboard. The wrapping paper inside has the words “great scott!” on them. And the sneakers come with hoverboard pink laces with blue tips.

The sneakers themselves are standard hyperdunks with a few notable differences. The Nike logo on the back is the same font and colour as the sneakers in BTTF2. The grey sides of the soles have blue paint specs on them, as in the movie. The uppers have triangular loops, deemphasised versions of the ultra high tops on the movie version. The lateral edge of the shoe is glow in the dark. The midsole has a pink and green hoverboard design, and if you lift it out, there’s a flux capacitor logo underneath it on the heel. The tongue of the shoe has orange/red Back to the Future arrows, and three dates and times as they might appear on the Flux capacitor’s controller: November 12 (the day the clock was struck by lightning), and two October days, partially obscured by a graphic.

They’re Nike, so they’re comfortable. I make no claims to their performance, but if they’re good enough for Kobe Bryant, I suppose they’ll work for blogging.

Michael Maloof of the McFly 2015 project had Nike send these to me for review because of the shared love we have for seeing these sneakers produced. They may not have power laces or electroluminescent Nike logos on them, but maybe that’ll come in version 2.

Unfortunately, it’s just one shoe, not the full pair, making wearing them down the street impossible. However, this one shoes was worn by Michael J. Fox and was used to build the final pair that he wore in the movie. Check it:

This is IT. The one and only original prototype of the Nike shoes Michael J. Fox wore in the movie Back To the Future II. You are bidding on a single shoe, not a pair. The shoe was designed as a working model, not a practical shoe, although it can be worn. It was worn once to the premiere of the movie in Beaverton, Oregon, and again by Michael J. Fox in Hollywood at a test fitting.

Back in 1989 I worked in the Nike Sport Research Lab as the Electronics Technician. The original BTF2 shoes for the movie were built by hand in the Nike Sample Room, and I was the one who designed and installed the electronics for them.

The lights in the side of the midsole and the Nike logo on the ankle strap are electro-luminescent panels, and there is an array of six randomly flashing LEDs on the side of the heel that were never visible in the movie

They were originally called “Slamball Shoes,” and that’s what most people called them around Nike. There was supposed to have been a scene in the movie in which Marty plays Slamball, a game like 3D racquetball where the participants wear magnetic shoes which allow them to climb up the walls. That scene was never shot because the cost of building a huge room on gimbals to create the effect was too great.

The REAL name of the shoes in Marty McFly’s world of 2015 was the “Nike Mag” because of their magnetic properties, and that’s what is molded in the back of the heel.
The shoe is in “good” condition for what it is, but since the polyurethane midsole and fabric body of the shoe were simply spray-painted in the suggested colour, some of the paint has flaked off over time. The LEDs, the E-L panel on the ankle strap, and one of the two E-L panels on the midsole still work. The other midsole panel comes on if you flex the shoe slightly. I originally thought I could get away with a rigid connection between those two panels, but it turned out that the flexing of the shoe during wear broke the connection. It might be fixable with some delicate surgery, but I never had the guts to try it.

The included power/electronics pack is hard-wired to the shoe, and requires two 9 volt batteries to operate.

I believe the shoe was built as a men’s size 9, although I couldn’t swear to it. It is whatever size Fox was at the time.

The shoe comes with a colour photocopy of the original design drawing by Nike’s Tinker Hatfield (the designer of all of the Air Jordans, among many other things).

Bidding starts at a cool US$1,000, and the auction ends in 9 days. Get them credit cards ready. [eBay; Thanks, Michael!