FirstCuts: Nike Air Stab Catches Heat For Name

Just this morning I had a link forwarded to me where a newspaper had done a piece on sneaker collectors, like it was this thing that had just sprung up out of the ground two weeks ago. And look, I don’t blame them, it’s new to a lot of people, but the following is what happens when a few people see something they don’t understand and therefore blame it for something completely unrelated:

Nike has been forced to withdraw a range of shoes called Air Stab from its British outlets after a spate of fatal knife attacks across the country.

Now, had Nike perhaps just released this shoe for the first time ever and it happened to coincide with a bunch of knife attacks, then it’s in poor taste and needs to be pulled. I get that. Here’s the thing. The Nike Air Stab was first released in 19-flippin’-88. The shoe has been retroed numerous times in a host of colorways. Now it’s responsible for a rash of stabbings in the U.K.? Nevermind that "Stab" was short for "Stability," not Jack The Ripper.

This ranks up there with Jack Thompson’s soon-to-be disbarred psychobabble that Grand Theft Auto games make kids kill. It’s like the people who run around thinking guns didn’t exist before hip-hop or violent movies.

Nike has done the politically correct thing, whether they had to or not, and has pulled the shoe. With 53 stabbings deaths this year, and the fact that it isn’t really what anyone would describe as a staple retro, it’s a chance for them to make the right move, but when I read comments like this, I wonder about the mental stability of people:

“I think it's appalling,” said Fatima Tarkhan, 25, as she browsed the walls of trainers. “They probably treat it as just a gimmick, but it's not the sort of thing that should be made into a joke. It's not funny at all.”

Really, Fatima Tarkhan? You think Nike set out, 20 years ago, to make a joke about stabbings that would occur in your neck of the woods? Truly, Nike’s marketing genius is stronger than I ever realized.

Credit to the Times writer getting a quote that points out the shoe was named years ago, but it’s buried. And I wonder if that was ever mentioned to the livid citizen quoted above.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.