News

Actions

Are Nike’s Back to the Future self-lacing shoes coming in 2015?

Posted at 1:51 PM, Jan 08, 2015
and last updated 2015-01-08 13:51:17-05

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Nike’s futuristic self-lacing shoes play a starring role in the 1989 movie “Back to the Future Part II.”

So will we get to see self-lacing kicks this year? After all, we are in 2015.

That’s the year the hero of the movie time travels to, sporting a snazzy pair of self-lacing Nike shoes.

Played by Michael J. Fox, the hero Marty McFly has always had a penchant for Nikes since the original “Back to the Future” of 1985, when he strides around in nikebttfhigh-tops.

Nike has most of 2015 now to make the movie’s prediction “right.”

At least that’s what Nike designer Tinker Hatfield recently said at a trade show in California. Hatfield said there are still “11 and two-thirds months left in 2015” to produce the so-called Nike MAGS.

In the movie, McFly drives his time-traveling DeLorean and dons the silvery white shoes.

“Power laces, all right!” he exclaims, with a tug on the tops and the shoes lace themselves with an electric purr.

The movie was Hollywood’s vision of the 2015 future.

It got a lot of things right, such as technology resembling Skype and Google Glass. And some things wrong, like people still using payphones and ubiquitous flying cars.

So far, the self-lacing Nikes would be among the things it got “wrong,” because it’s 2015 and they’re nowhere to be seen.

Nike wouldn’t comment for the story.

However, the company did file a patent for an “automatic lacing system” in 2008, and the patent illustration is identical to the futuristic shoes worn by McFly.